That Latin Flair
by Anotherjaneway
Summary: A vision leaves Marco circumspect around the holidays and inspires Roy and Johnny to do charity work for his church group.


This is a text version of the original still airing imaged, music soundtracked story.

Emergency Theater Live, Episode Seventeen

17. That Latin Flair Season Two - Episode 17 Short summary-  
A vision leaves Marco circumspect around the holidays and inspires Roy and Johnny to do charity work for his church group.

****WARNING**** The long summary to come is very story spoiling and will take away plot surprises if you read it now before reading the longer story below it.

Decide now if you want to read this episode's detailed summary before doing so.

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Long Summary-  
Around the holidays, Station 51 responds to a car roll over near the L.A. River bed. They discover a passenger pinned under power wires and a missing ejected driver. While attempting to free the trapped man, Marco Lopez suffers an electrical shock which accelerates his heart dangerously. Roy and Johnny are forced to cardiovert him to prevent heart arrest. Lopez experiences a life after death vision of his dead father during the cardioversion and it changes him emotionally. The gang finds the second man's body in the riverbed. A week later, the gang helps the healing Marco aid a soup kitchen. Teenagers start a fire there and Roy and Johnny mount multiple rescues of the children and volunteers trapped inside the fast spreading grease fire. Chet's hands are burned getting a victim out.  
Later, Squad 51 responds to a finger hammered fainted man and bail out a dog pinned treed postman. Dixie offers to cook the gang Christmas dinner at the station and pulls a mistletoe joke on Roy and Johnny. At an L.A. Headquarters New Year's Eve party, Marco talks about his life after death experience with a boy who very nearly suffered the same thing during the soup kitchen fire and finds solace.

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The Story Unfolds...

Season Two, Episode Seventeen..

That Latin Flair Debut Launch: December 1st 2004.

*  
From: "Robert Gutheim" .com Date: Thu Dec 2, 2004 9:00 am Subject: Green Christmas

Chet as usual checked around for a certain dark haired paramedic before he went and filled a balloon with water intending to rig the paramedics locker so that it would spring out and get him wet when he opened the door.

He was having a little trouble setting up the spring mechanism though when he heard a voice behind him.  
"You do realize, Chet, that a certain white bearded man in a red coat is watching. You wouldn't want to get a stocking full of coal on Christmas morning. Or worse, latrine duty, if Cap finds out about you trying to pull a phantom act on me yet again," a voice said causing Chet to startle and the water balloon to fall on top of him.

"Gage, you don't actually believe in that whole Santa Claus bit do you. After all, your wha? Almost thirty? Plus you are half Native American." Chet pointed out.

"I know. But we celebrated Christmas using the non-religious aspects like other human beings," Gage said as he started to put on his uniform.

A few minutes later, they were gathered with the others for roll call.

"OK, everyone, let's start with a few memos from various Headquarters." said Cap. "First off, no egg nog is to be found on any departmental property by order of Chief Houts.

"The Departmental Christmas Party is at Headquarters in the main commissary on December 22nd all firefighters off duty are required to attend and on duty firefighters are encouraged to stop in, so long as their rigs are on hand.

"McConikee wants me to remind everyone to keep a careful eye out for any holiday related fire hazards. Now the fun part, daily chores. Cooking, Stoker, Dishes, Lopez. Apparatus Bay, DeSoto. Hose Tower,Gage. Latrine Duty, Kelly."

"Ah, Cap, why am I stuck with latrine duty? Isn't it obvious I'm the one that is wet, not Gage?" Chet moaned.

"I know how you tend to be, Chet. Now get going, or I will stick you with latrine duty from now until Christmas." Cap threatened him.

The tone box went off right then.

##Station 51. Car crash with injuries. 2300 E 223rd Street. 2300 E 223rd Street. Cross Street, Alameda. Time out, 0810.##

"Station 51 KMG365," Cap said, before the engine and squad rolled out of the station.

Photos: None.

*  
From : patti keiper Sent : Thursday, December 16, 2004 11:30 AM Subject : Snap! Crackle and Pop....

Station 51 pulled up at a curb deep in the heart of Carson.  
The accident had occurred as reported, but involved only one car and a power pole on the outskirts of the landfill /junkyard which flanked the L.A. river bed. The pole was down and sparking. Cap kept a nose and eye out for gas pools even as he informed Headquarters with what he had. "L.A. Engine 51."

##Engine 51. ##

"We have a single vehicle overturned on the boulevard. Lines are down. Have the electric company cut power to the east side block of Alameda between 223rd street, and Franklin."

##10-4, 51.## came a reply after a short pause on the air over both the station's vehicle radioes and all of their HT's. ## Power utilities says electrical power will be cut in five minutes.##

"Copy that. Engine 51, out." and he threw the HT onto the seat of the open door of the Ward LaFrance. "Gang, circle and look for any victims a safe distance away. Stoker, draw out the reel line and wash down all this grass only when those lines have been powered down."

"Right, Cap." said Mike Stoker.

"The rest of you. See what you can see without getting too close!"  
advised Stanley, yelling over the angry hiss and crackle of violated powerlines from the toppled pole which leaped and tangled with themselves on the pavement.

Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto walked to the down wind side of the wreck with a healthy thirty feet between them and the downed pole and writhing wires. It was a tan car, resting on its roof, in the middle of a grass island which split a fork in the road into a Y. A man lay on his stomach and his legs were pinned by the heavy weight of the crashed car. It didn't seem like any live wires were touching the car or the man.

Gage sniffed carefully in the breeze blowing in his face as he pulled on his gloves. "Can't tell if he's still alive. There's too much wind moving his clothes around. No gas, though. We're lucky that way at least."

Roy shouted to the victim. "Hey! Can you hear me?! Don't try to move! There are wires down all over the place. We'll be right in to get ya, just hang on a bit and don't panic!"

The two paramedics circled the wreck site even as the rest of the gang laid protective hose and got the heavy extrication equipment lined up in a safe area. Johnny picked up a flashlight and aimed it onto the man's face in spite of the bright sunlight. "I see sweat beads. He's gotta be alive still. Anyone dead would've been dried off already in this wind."

The two pacing firemen backed away from the accident site even further when the wind rolled a bucking wire into their direction.

Johnny threw an axe on top of it to pin it to the cement, and then leaped out of the way. Cap's head snapped up at the clanging noise, but then he gave Gage a solid thumbs up of approval.

Roy had taken the flashlight from Johnny and he was trying to see into the dark recesses of the car's compartment. "Where's the driver?"

"What?" said Johnny, from where he stood, resting his gloves on his knees, as he studied how they would begin to get their victim free once the area was safe.

"Our victim's the passenger. See? That seat belt is still around his waist. Broken free, but still around him." said DeSoto, as he played the light over the bluish belt and into the car.

"I think you're right. Even if the car flipped, there's no way he could've slid over fast enough if he were driving to get pinned like the way he's pinned now. It doesn't add up." Johnny rubbed his nose.

"Cap!" shouted Roy over the angry spitting from the wires.

##Go...## said Cap from the other side of the scene, by the station trucks, over an airwave.

Roy belatedly pulled out his walkie talkie and hit the talk button.  
"We're a victim shy. This is the passenger, Cap. Belt confirms it."

##Ok, I'll assume a possible ejection and call out a search. Stand by for news..##

Roy could just make out Cap verbally sending Chet and Stoker into wider and wider scouting patterns, looking for blood and other traces the driver might have left behind. Cap himself jogged over to the police officer keeping away the public to see if any of those people had seen anything about what might have happened.

Marco got ready with a plastic tarp and extrication gear. He left a stokes next to a longboard in case the man's legs were too badly broken for easy securing once they got him out from under the car.

Then he stood waiting by an idling K-12 for signs that all the electricity was turned off. It was hard to tell in the wind which lines were hot and which were not. It seemed like all of them were swaying. So Lopez used the spot where Johnny's axe was connecting and kept an eye on the blue orange sparks dancing around the head and handle.

Chet came back with a clump of hair in his glove and he showed Cap. "It's human...too fine to be dog.. and I think I smell Johnson to Johnson's on it. "

"Where'd you find that, pal?!" asked Hank, shouting over the noise of the electrical wires.

"Between us and the river bed!" replied Chet, dropping the clump of hair to the ground.

Hank sighed, turning so he could see the long barb wired wall of fencing marking proximity to the river spillway. "Oh, boy. Better start casing along the edge. The brush's pretty thick down there. The driver could be anywhere if he flew out of the car in that direction." Then he rubbed his face. "Tell you what. You and Stoker grab some ropes and rappel down on in. The flood gates won't be released until noon for this part of the city. See what you can see and keep in touch by walkie. Johnny, Roy, Marco and I will handle the passenger ourselves. It'll take at least ten minutes for more help to arrive on this."

"Will do, Cap." said Kelly and he jogged off to the engine to get two harness sets.

Cap called out onto the rescue channel. "Engine 51, L.A."

##Engine 51.##

"Respond an urban rescue truck and air support to our location for a victim search. We may have one in the river bed."

##10-4. UR reports an ETA of four minutes. Chopper 10 has been informed.  
Pilot has your canyon in sight. He reports an arrival time in two.##

Marco, Johnny and Roy all stood by, antsy and restless, all staring hard at the man on the ground for signs of life beyond the cold sweat pouring off of his pale skin. Then a hand twitched and his lips moved in a gasp of pain as some awareness returned.

Cap shouted, getting their attention. All three firefighters whirled towards the engine. Hank gestured a cut throat motion across his neck and then pointed to Johnny's axe. It had quit dancing and there was no sign of high voltage fire encircling it any longer.

"Ok, let's move out. Marco.. grab the K-12. We already know there's no gas leaking. Try and get that weight off of his legs while we stabilize his C-spine for his extrication...It won't take long. He's already laying in a line." Gage mapped out.

"Ok, Johnny." said Lopez, hefting up the seventy pound tool onto a shoulder.

The three men carefully stepped over the wind swaying wires in case the power came back on. They could see Cap talking with a police officer, trying to find any witness to the moment of the crash to help pin point the river bed search.

In a test, Roy leaned over and spit on a wire. Nothing happened. "So far so good." he said, pulling off a glove to test the quality of the man's carotid.  
"Johnny, 126 and thready. Breathing's real shallow at 22 and he's diaphoretic."

Gage nodded, running his hands over the man's back and arms until finally he reached in to see if he could locate the man's feet to see if they were still attached. They were. "I got pulses in both ankles."  
and he started to cut away the man's shirt, sleeves and pant legs to look for further injuries. He found a few pieces of glass embedded in his hip. Those he left alone.

Roy got the man onto some oxygen, right where he lay on his stomach, and contented himself with getting an initial set of vital signs while Johnny worked to get a more complete assessment. All the while,  
the fair haired paramedic talked to his victim. "Easy, mister. My partner and I are gonna take real good care of you. Just try to relax.  
We're looking for your friend right now. Just don't try to move around too much. We're gonna get you splinted up here in a minute or so once a firefighter's cut you free. So get ready for some noise.  
I'm gonna cover your face for protection, all right?"

The man on the ground moaned a reply and his fingers crawled on the grass in affirmation. Roy took off his turncoat and lay it over the man's head and body. He used the edge of the biophone to keep an open view of the man's face to watch for any color changes there.

Marco Lopez fired up the circle saw and tapped Johnny on the shoulder to get out of the way. Gage scrambled to join Roy by the gear boxes at the man's head and there he busied himself with getting a double set of I.V.s laid out and ready for a doctor's go ahead.

Lopez lowered his face shield and dug the blade into the car door's hinges to slice them apart.

A loud crackle made everyone yell.

A brief repowering surged through the power pole wires and one of them touched the car and sent Marco flying. The K-12 spun into high gear where it was wedged into the car and sang angrily.

The electricity also made the man cry out and twist up in a spasm.

Johnny and Roy jerked away from the car and the man. Gage took a risk and used both his gloves, wadded up, to flick off the K-12 so that it wouldn't cut itself free and fall on top of the man.

Roy whirled, crawling around the once again live wires to Lopez's side. "Marco?!" The hispanic firefighter was on his back, cradling his hands into his lap where he lay. Roy crawled on top of him to protect him from any more wires. "You ok? Did any of that power get to you?"

"Ahh!... yeah. A little bit. I'm ...kinda short.....of breath.. And.  
Ow!..*gasp* I think I jammed one of .....*gasp* ..my fingers."

Roy looked down and saw an index finger jutting out at a ninety in a direction that it wasn't meant to bend in. "You did more than that.  
Just try to keep your head down!" puffed Roy. He held Marco's legs still with his own when a muscle spasm jerked through the fireman's body involuntarily. He kept a hand on Marco's wrist to monitor the bounding pulse there. "Easy.. Don't move. I can see Cap running to call the power company back. I'll help hold you still. You managed to land in the only safe spot in the area..."

"Roy?! You guys ok?!" came Gage's voice.

Roy didn't dare lift his head. "Yeah... Marco's conscious.  
You?!"

"We're fine. G*dd*mned power company. I'll kill em as soon as we get out of here!"

Roy chuckled, "Let's just concentrate on getting out of here first junior! Worry about the rest later.."

There was a pause around the hissing popping noises. DeSoto didn't dare try to see where they were coming from.

"How's he doing?!" Johnny asked from that direction.

"Some cardiac changes. He's SOB." Roy said, burying his face a little deeper into the smoky grass. "Awake for now."

Marco's face contorted as another series of muscle cramps shot through his thrumming body. An involuntary groan slipped out.

Then the radio snapped into life from Roy's pocket. ##Hang in there fellas. The power's going back off. A construction crew down the road didn't realize that we were on emergency shutdown. I see you're all ok and that Marco's still awake. Just keep still with your helmets on and I promise you a solution in less than a minute. ## came Cap's welcome, amazingly calm voice.

::Guess that's why they pay him the big bucks:  
Roy tried to lighten the mood where the two of them huddled on the ground.  
"Hell of a way to earn a little vacation time, Marco, you know that?" he said, flinching when a snaking wire swung a little too close near their heads.

Marco tried to laugh but a convulsion got in the way. Roy turned him onto his side and just hugged him closer, loosening his turnout and uniform shirt collars away from his neckline. "Keep still. Just a minute or so longer.."

Lopez began to fight to breathe as his muscles cramped up from the voltage's earlier violation and the pulse under DeSoto's fingers started to skip beats.

"Marco?" Roy asked from where he lay across the fireman's stomach.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: A car accident with downed powerlines.

Photo: The L.A. river bed, choked with brush.

Photo: Marco carrying jaws.

Photo: Roy over a downed Marco.

Photo: Johnny and Roy stunned, and lying on their backs in smoke.

Photo: Roy huddled down close on top of something, scared stiff.

*  
From: "patti keiper" Date: Sun Dec 19, 2004 4:22 pm Subject: The Other Side...

offstory-  
Medical Researched Material Linked to M.D. Consultants :

BENOIT BAILEY, MD, MSc, PIERRE GAUDREAULT, MD, ROBERT L. THIVIERGE, MD Paris, France onstory-

Marco's eyes weren't seeing anything, staring and seemingly sightless, pointed upwards to the sky in an unfocused gaze.  
His whole body spasming took on a unified tetany and then, he froze that way, extending every muscle. "R---r, g-get off my chest. Cru---sh---ng me."

Roy, keeping low and away from the lashing wires spitting electricity so near them, subconsciously glanced down in worry,  
even as he held down Marco's shoulders to keep him from touching any of the swaying power lines buzzing angrily around them.

DeSoto was nowhere near Lopez's upper torso to cause any pressure there. Not with any part of his body. "Marco...can you hear me? Are you having chest pain right n--?"

Marco hissed, the color draining from his face as he contorted at its unexpected arrival. "Y---sss!!" he gurgled.

The pulse Roy held at Marco's wrist, disappeared and Marco gasped, suddenly air hungry.

Shifting onto his stomach, the flax haired paramedic immediately reached higher up on Marco's arm, grabbing for the groove where Marco's brachial artery lay. He found the pulse again. It was fitful and way above 150 beats a minute; his rhythm, oddly disjointed.

Tipping his head way back didn't help with Marco's shortness of breath in the slightest. His attempts to breathe were still hitched and irregular,  
barely adequate. Roy tore away his shirt, tearing off buttons as he got down to Lopez's heavily sweating skin.

DeSoto put an ear to Marco's ribs. He heard the liquidy rubbing gravely sound of rales beginning to take an ominous hold inside of the fireman's lungs.

His head whipped up. "Johnny,... Marco's V-tachy! Over 150 with irregularities, with marked rales. No radial pulses. LOC's way down.  
We have to manage something for him...now! I've no head room to work if he goes into cardiac arrest!" he said, keeping shifting,  
panicky eyes on the swinging cables sparking around him.

Gage tried shouting over the roaring ping of raw power zinging in cabled tangles over his helmeted head to Cap. He couldn't move or get eye contact because of the crumpled bulk of the automobile. He had to stay laying over his own victim, the dazed car passenger, to fend off the wires as best he could with a piece of the splintered telephone pole. "Cap!! Hey!..We gotta get Marco out of there, now! He's unstable!"

But Hank's back was momentarily turned, shouting orders to the growing neighborhood crowd, to get further away from the area.

As yet, there was no sign of Chet and Stoker reappearing along the ropes cast over the riverbed's wall. Johnny wasn't even sure if they could hear the snapping and popping of electricity shooting into the downed powerlines.

Fruitlessly, Johnny searched his turnout jacket for an HT. But he didn't have one with him. The squad radio was in the hands of his partner, who couldn't let go of Marco's head at all or risk losing a tenuous open airway.

Yelling in frustration, Gage's gloves shot out and he dragged the biophone on the grass nearby into ready reach. Then quickly,  
he hailed out. "Rampart, this is Squad 51! Come in!"

A long space of fifteen seconds passed before the voice of Dr.  
Brackett replied. ##Unit calling in, this is Rampart. Go ahead..##

Johnny abbreviated his out transmission. "51! Male Code I, electrical shock.  
Fall : standing to the ground. Unstable V- tachyarrythmias. 150 plus. BP under 90. Conscious! I'm separated from Roy, who's on him. I'm with all gear under loose live voltage wires out of direct access! Orders?"

Dr. Brackett shoved the phone a little closer to his ear. He squinted and straightened up in alarm at the hair raising din of energy howling almost completely over Johnny's voice. ##Are you within tossing range?##

"Affirmative!!" yelled Johnny, as he pinwheeled an arm round and round, until Cap finally noticed him. He whistled, pointing to Marco,  
making a cut throat gesture, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder to show that Lopez needed an immediate out.

##Ok, Johnny. Now listen close......## said Kel over the phone.  
Johnny plugged his other ear in order to hear him better.

Gage saw Hank's head cast around rapidly for a ready answer and he held up a hand in a hasty I got it, wait, move.

Johnny heard Hank recalling Chet and Stoker to the engine distantly over Roy's radio. It echoed around the houses on the block, lacing through the spits and whines and howls of power curling in the air around them.

Then he did something else which made Johnny nod in complete and total agreement.. "Yeah.. yeah.. That'll work. Bring it on in!"

Brackett's voice over the landline was terse, focused.  
## Six milligrams, adenosine rapid IVP into a Normal Saline line! Flush through 10ml NS bolus. Then recheck for conversion. If none in 1 to 2,  
double it with a second flush! Get him out of there, 51! I don't care how you do it. With those findings, his crash potential's a guaranteed certainty in as short as five! Forget about any C-spine precautions! Saving his life's more important! His contact with a wire at ground level, most likely didn't break anything critical. ##

"6 of Adenosine in NS IV. Push 10ml's same solution. Double in 1 to 2!" Johnny spat back in intense concentration.

##Confirmed. Move, Gage! Re-contact only when you guys have him#  
shouted Brackett.

Kel heard the clatter of the phone onto something made of metal and the line went dead, or so he thought, but then the liquid lava spit of electricity burned his ear. He gripped the phone in frustrated anticipation.

Johnny Gage snatched a hand each into the IV and drug boxes and pulled out tubing, a fluid bag, needles, and three packs of pre-mixed adenosine in the right dosages.

He stripped off his belt and bundled the pack together tightly. Then he swung the medicines around his head like a bolo and he horse whistled, piercingly, until Roy's head shot up again from where he crouched over Marco's chest and face.

Lopez was no longer blinking, nor moving,.. and his color was almost completely, the washed gray of old river mud. Only his chest rising and falling in unregular jerks showed that he had any shred of fighting life inside of him. Thin choking moans trickled out of his mouth, which Roy soothed away with fast encouragements and what he was doing to help him.

Johnny let the bundle fly at the top of an arch and it arrowed through the maze of snaking power lines through the air at Roy....

The bag of I.V. saline slipped out and impacted a wire in an explosion of steam, which made both paramedics flinch sharply. But the rest, Roy caught with all the skill of a practiced soft ball catcher. ::Thank you, Chet.:: Roy thought, ::For making me be your soft ball umpire in the backyard all summer long.::

Johnny swore, and grabbed up a second bag, which he threw it like a football into a gap between the wires.  
It got through and sailed into Roy's chest, and bounced, undamaged into his hands. Then Gage crouched once more over the biophone while his other hand kept tabs on the car victim's carotid.

Roy moved until he could keep Marco's head tipped at the proper angle with his knees. He began to work leaning on his elbows over Marco's shivering body.

"Marco. I got help right here. Keep still while I start your I.V."  
said DeSoto, breathless and strained. Lopez didn't act like he heard Roy and he screwed up the arm Roy wasn't pinning down with a shoulder, against his chest in renewed pain. "No.. don't fight me Marco!..." Roy grunted. "Can you hear me?!"

"AgggGG-gh! *gasp* Make...it.....st-----"  
Something in Marco's eyes shifted, moving from agony, to fear and all of his muscles loosened, just a tad. It was all Roy needed.  
He spoke again as he pushed a fast needle into a vein using a strip from Marco's torn shirt as a tourniquet. He strung a line,  
barely bleeding it fully of air before he injected the internal cell energy hormone into the infusion chamber followed by the plasma bolus wash. The increments on the two syringes couldn't empty to zero fast enough for Roy and he yelled in frustration at the slowness at which they were delivering. He killed the time by talking, urgently soft.

"This'll med'll do that.. As fast as I can get it into ya... Try to do something else for me that might ease that pain in your chest." Roy urged. "Take a deep breath and blow it out against your nose and mouth without letting any air escape...."

Marco sobbed, unable to control the muscles of his lips to obey Roy.

"Take another breath in. Bigger.. That's it...now...hold it." And Roy covered Marco's nose and mouth firmly so air couldn't escape. "Blow it out, hard,  
against my fingers. That's it.. Do it for ten seconds and I'll let ya go."

Roy followed up the valsalva attempt by leaning an arm over Marco's abdomen to increase the pressure just enough inside of him internally,  
to make Lopez tighten his face with resisting effort, but not with any pain.

"Ok...let it out... let it out...easy....." said Roy, pulling his hand away.  
His other one monitored the racing tachycardic pulse in Lopez's neck.  
".....blow it out slow... Now breathe, best you can, like normal..."

The skipping beats underneath Marco's skin slowed, almost to normal, for long seconds.. But then the crushing chest pain and shortness of breath and the dangerous rain of rapid beats, returned to reinstate themselves with a vengeance. Lopez choked as he re-immersed into difficulty.

Roy turned him over onto his left side. "Ok, ok...it didn't work. Just relax.  
I got you..That move usually resolves any tachycardia on the first try. We won't do that again. Sorry for giving you nausea... Johnny! Tell Brackett! Valsalva and first dose. No effect!.. I'm timing it for the second!" he shouted, looking at his watch while he held Marco's head still in his lap.

"Got it! Stand by!" hollered Gage.

DeSoto's head snapped to the right as a new sound of power filled his ears. It was the squad, thunking tires up onto the curb, with Cap behind the wheel. He was coming to get them. "To your left! Your fenders will push the wires away! Then I think I can get Marco into the cab with us!" ::Smart idea.. the tires'll insulate us from any wire he drives over.  
I can tell him when none are in contact with the chassis for the rest of it:  
Roy decided. He shouted directions until he was absolutely sure the rescue squad wasn't getting infused with electricity.

Then he snatched open the passenger side door in a guts move.  
Cap's eager hands grabbed Lopez by the collar and back of pants and dragged him into the squad belly down. He shifted him upright against himself into a hug and caught the I.V. bag and line Roy was protecting as Lopez moved. "Get in!" Hank shouted. "Then roll up the window, tight! Use this asbestos tarp to insulate yourself and Marco away from all the exterior metal, Iike I did with mine.

Roy did so, flopping Marco's head back over his shoulder,  
once he was done. Hank had had the foresight to grab an ambu bag and this Roy began using to help Marco with his inhalations.  
The IV bag continued running, just over KVO, hanging from DeSoto's teeth.

Lopez fought the mask over his face but Hank and Roy managed to pin down his arms enough for it to work and some of the worst of the grayish blue coloring began to recede. One handed, Captain Stanley made a U- turn away from the crashed car so they wouldn't endanger Johnny with the wires they were accumulating in tangles against the hood and light rack of the squad.

Hank pulled far enough away to break all the wires knotted around them from the energized transformers. Then he got out, and between him and Roy, they shoulder walked Marco to an open space and lowered him to the ground as carefully as they could.

All the motion roused Marco enough that he managed without the ambu breathing support but Roy didn't count on that lasting and hurried to connect it up to some oxygen from the engine's apparatus.

Johnny had completed getting his medical orders for the man under the car so he accepted the rope Kelly tossed in order to tie off the biophone so that it could be dragged into the safety of the street for Roy to use. The same went for the drug box and other gear.

Right then, the power went off in the main neighborhood line and all the writhing lengths of electrical wire dropped into smoking, stinking stillness.

Chet and Stoker wasted no time in helping Gage get the car accident victim's extrication by K-12 going again, followed by a thorough long boarding evac complete with a C-collar and the one hare traction splint that they had found that they needed for a left femur fracture.

Roy re-established contact with Rampart in seconds.

##Johnny's already told me about the valsalva maneuver and the adenosine not working well enough. Any further improvement? #  
the worried doctor asked.

"None.." replied Roy, as he watched Cap start to hook Marco up to the EKG monitor. Marco, was only gasping, no longer trying to speak, on his back under a flowing oxygen mask.  
"He needed assistance breathing a few minutes ago."

Roy couldn't wait... He kicked open the defibrillator with a foot and got out the paddles for a quick peek, and he settled them onto Marco's panting chest. He spoke into the phone receiver that he had perched onto a shoulder. "Rampart, I'm reading gross multifocal ventricular bigeminy with a rate of 160.  
Stand by for telemetry on your end to confirm it." DeSoto, said,  
shoving the I.V. bag under one of Marco's shoulders. He bumped it up into wide open to get set for more meds.

There was a long pause as Cap and Roy both fumbled to set the EKG Tetronix's controls on strongest signal and to wire the unit into the biophone output port.

Johnny kept looking up at them as he and the others worked to free the man completely from under the car. He only vaguely heard Chet acknowledge that Chopper Ten was starting a run along the riverbed, looking for the car's tossed out driver. He was very concerned by the audible chaos coming from Marco's cardiac tracing. "Roy? What does it show?"

DeSoto told him.

"Man, Brackett's gonna order a cardio--" Johnny started to say.

## I concur with you wholeheartedly, 51. Unstable ventricular tachycardia. What are the rest of his vital signs?"

"B/P ......." Roy spoke, breathing fast,....." ..'s 78 over P. Rate's still the same with barely palpable carotids. Respirations are irregular and work of breathing's marginally poor on fifteen liters of O2."  
## Looks like we have no choice, 51. You're gonna have to give him a shock to cardiovert him into a more stable rhythm before you transport..##

Cap's eyes didn't like the sound of that. They filled immediately with alarm. "Can you do that while he's still awake?"

Roy licked his lips and nodded reluctantly. "When we have to.  
It won't be too fun at all. For him, or for me."

## 51, is your victim still conscious?##

DeSoto lifted up the receiver once more. "That's affirmative, doc. Very. And he's feeling....a lot." cracked Roy's tired voice.

A long thoughtful, I don't like it sigh was heard clearly over the biophone line. ##....ok, Roy. Let's get the job done. Now I don't have to tell you twice. Get set for a full blown ET intubation in case this doesn't work out. Prepare for v-fib, the worst case scenario. Make sure you have enough personnel on hand to handle it...##

"10-4, Rampart...uh, we do." Roy said quietly, looking to Cap, who gave a silent command for Kelly and a policeman to peel off their coats in order to provide CPR help. Hank himself, crouched at Marco's head, setting the waiting, clear rubber, O2 filled ambu bag, onto his knees.

DeSoto didn't like the idea.

::Who knows how badly his heart's already been damaged by all that electricity. Simply adding more might throw him into unconvertible fibrillation due to excessive energy induced ischemia. :: Roy thought.

Roy found his eyes being met by Marco's in a strange moment of clarity.::Do it...:: Lopez seemed to say through them.::I trust you, Roy::

DeSoto looked away from Marco's face and almost started pumping up the BPcuff again just to bury his burgeoning negative emotions into such a familiar task. :: In less than two minutes, I might be cutting Marco's life short, permanently.::

Kel Brackett broke him out of the frightening, nightmarish possibility.  
##Roy, I'm now seeing a wide complex tachycardia in the range of 170.  
We can't wait. We can't allow this to go on. His system won't tolerate it much longer.##

"Doc, I've never done one of these before in the field. Johnny's gutsier,  
maybe he oughta be the one t--"

##Johnny isn't here. He's up to his elbows in extrication gear trying to save the life of our victim number one. Now bone up and save victim number two and push any personal feelings you may have aside. If you haven't learned to trust the orders of your attending MD in eight years working as a full fledged paramedic, you'll never learn it. I'll walk you through the whole thing, as it happens, just like I do any first year resident physician. ##

"I'm not a physician."

##No, you're an extension of one. A fully authorized, long arm coming directly off of........me... So quit stalling. Listen carefully.  
The difference between defibrillation and cardioversion is that the countershock is synchronized to the QRS complex which allows the electric current to be delivered after the R wave and before the period associated with the T wave. There's a toggle I didn't show you in training on the back of the defibrillator. Switch it on now. See the yellow flashing light on your monitor screen?  
You've just engaged the synchronization button. That blinking yellow dot is a marker that appears only when your victim's heart reaches the R wave of the heart beat cycle. When you deliver your shock, do it only when that dot appears. This will insure that counter shock is delivered during the QRS complex, the most optimum time to regain a normal sinus rhythm. Now keep your strip on. I wanna see what you get through the whole thing.  
Set your charge to 100 watt seconds and gel up. We'll perform the actual cardioversion once we get your patient prepared properly.  
Any questions#  
Roy was speechless.

##Fine. I'll take that as a no. Do your standard first. 100 mg's Lidocaine IV push and let's see what happens.##

Roy gave Marco the medication as fast as he could, as pure nervous adrenalin made his fingers fly. "No change, doc. He's still the same."  
DeSoto reported shakily.

##Ok, let's abandon that approach. Give him some Propofol 2.5 mg/kg IV ...on my order only. Now this sedative will be extremely short acting. Four or five minutes tops after the initial sixty seconds following its delivery into his blood stream. His breathing will be suppressed, so help it along.  
This dose will buffer him from recollecting the pain that'll come from the countershock but it won't knock him out. We need him awake because he'll be less apt to vomit during the counter shock : a complication from which he could die due to aspiration. He'll recover from the propofol momentarily if we're successful, but his BP will fall below where it is now. Bradycardia might set in afterwards, too. But don't worry, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Give him another 100 mg's Lidocaine at your next five minute mark.  
After we cardiovert, switch over to a Lidocaine dose of 50 mg's every five because he's still in shock, up to another 100 mg's. I'll allow you to attempt synchronized cardioversion up to four times. First the 100 joules, then 200, then 300 and finally 360. If he doesn't catch,  
we'll try something else medication wise. Remember, if your clinical conditions go critical at any stage of the game, go to unsynchronized shocks like you normally do for v-fib. Ready?... Give him the propofol, Roy. His R on T's are greater than 6 per minute now. Roy,..remember all that I've told you...you .....you................you....##

In a haze, Roy gave Marco the sedative through his gushing, richly flowing I.V.

Then he reached for the defibrillator paddles and held them up for Cap to gel once Marco stopped tensing and began swallowing mechanically.

Cap gave the lightly sedated Lopez two breaths on ambu, then he lifted its mask up in the air to get out of the way..

Roy set the paddles down onto the framing positions around Marco's heart.

-  
::Mama! I don't want to die!:: cried Marco, deep inside..

A warm rush of energy lifted him up that was almost a noise and the horrid thudding in his ears faded away into silence.

Puuffffhhhhhhh.... Air went into his lungs. Effortlessly.

Puuuufffffhhhh.. It was getting easier. He didn't have to work so hard anymore.

Puuuufffffhhhhhhhhhhh..... So Lopez .....gave up and just let it happen.

Marco opened his "eyes" into a bright white light that offered the purest peace and comfort...and saw.......and ............saw.........

....... ::Papa?::

Tears filled Marco's eyes at the sight of the man he hadn't seen since the night he died just two days after his tenth birthday.

Lopez reached out to touch his face lovingly.

JOLT!

-  
Marco's body arched upwards under Roy's hands, accepting the gift of change, reacting to the conversion energy and the sedative with a myoclonus effect. A flood of tears poured out of both Marco's eyes.

It surprised Cap, who almost didn't offer Lopez another breath on the bag while it was happening.

"Dr. Brackett..." started Roy in alarm over the phone on his shoulder.

##It's all right on my end. I think it's working. Pay no mind to that muscular reaction. Keep maintaining his airway and breathing. He'll come out of it.##

Immediately,.. an innocent innocuous unadulterated sinus rhythm of fifty started knitting itself across the defibrillator's EKG monitor.

Roy sighed........and smiled the most heartfelt grin Cap had ever seen on a fireman.

Marco soon after, started breathing well enough, on his own.

Just in time for Gage to see as he trudged by with a patient loaded stokes headed for a Mayfair.  
"Did it work?"

"You have to ask?" remarked Chet. "He's doing absolutely terrific now. Look......."And Kelly pointed out the regular and clockwork squiggles on Marco's rhythm strip. "And we got Roy and Doc Brackett to thank for it, too." Kelly added.

"Don't forget the big man upstairs.. You forgot Him again, Chet,  
I'm a professed Lutheran." Roy reminded him.

"Oh, yeah, Him, too.." and Kelly hastily crossed himself.  
"Man, I wonder if Marco realizes how close he came to biting the big one..."

Johnny smirked as he walked by. "Guess we'll have to ask him once he comes to mentally in the ambulance. Nice work, Roy. I couldn't have done better myself."

"Oh yes you could. Brackett's one hell of a doctor. He'd make Kelly here raise the dead if it was possible." said Roy, taking another blood pressure reading on Marco.

"I shudder the thought...." muttered Cap, switching out the ambu bag for a regular non-rebreather. "Lopez's set. He's at 18 a minute again. I better go head up the search for the third victim...... Kelly.."

"Hmm?" said Chet.

"Come with me."

"Oh, uh, ok, Cap."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

*  
From : Roxy Dee Sent : Wednesday, December 22, 2004 3:59 PM Subject : The Christmas Gift~~

There was a distant, high pitched wailing in his ears.

Frowning, Marco coughed and opened his eyes in puzzlement. He found himself staring at a double set of sunlit windows over his toes from where he was sitting. He was propped upright on something soft and yielding, under his butt and legs. ::An ambulance cot.:: he realized. Two I.V. lines were swinging against the side of his face and bumping his cheek, so he lifted a hand to push them away. ::I don't understand...where is he:  
he thought muzzily. :: Father was right here..::

"Marco...." said a masculine voice. "Are you with me yet?"  
it asked and then Lopez felt a warm grip stop his hand from touching the I.V. tubing.

Lopez blinked. He knew that voice and tried to speak, but it came out as a nonsensical liquidy groan. A face leaned in and blocked out the bright glow from the windows and tugged on something hissing until it cupped around his nose and mouth more tightly. ::This's O2. I'm hurt?:: Surprise registered on Marco's face and he finally formed a question.  
And a name finally popped into recall of who was sitting above him along with half a dozen emotions. ::That's Roy..:: and he shifted restlessly under the beige blanket, feeling straps snugged across his body. Anger and fear, coursed through him.  
"How'm I ...d-doing?" he gasped.

"Easy. You're still coming out of sedation. Don't be surprised if you feel agitated inside emotionally. That's normal. Did you feel me shock you a few minutes ago?" asked Roy.

"Didn't...feel a thing." Marco said, still clearly remembering the soft lines of his father's face that he had seen in that strange soothing nether light when he had given up. "Roy..."

"Yeah.." Roy said, looking up from the blood pressure he was taking on Marco.

"Did I die?"

DeSoto's eyebrows went up at the question but the smile he offered Marco on his face, didn't shift a single millimeter.  
Roy shook his head. "We never lost a pulse on ya. You went from VT to NSR instantly without a hitch. Cap only had to help you breathe a couple of times on the bag when the sedative's full effect hit ya. There were no complications at all." he grinned.  
"That chest pain left yet?"

"It's gone." Marco sighed.

"Figured it was just that rapid heartbeat doing it..Let me listen to your chest to see if your lungs have cleared up yet."

Marco blinked, nodding. "What have you got me on? I still feel kinda strange.."

Roy chuckled. "Doc ordered a little MS for ya. You got a little combative when we were loading you up because you were still a little out of it. And you're on a Lidocaine drip to keep a normal rhythm...Ok, take a deep breath.."

Marco did.

"And another one.." said Roy, sliding the drum of his stethoscope over to his left side along the side of his ribs.

"And again." Roy said, leaning him forward so he could listen to Marco's back. Then he rocked back onto the caregiver seat and jotted down a few notes. "Your edema's clearing nicely."

"What was that from? I wasn't in any smoke...." Lopez coughed.

"Sometimes when your heart races too fast, fluid can build up in your lungs. That was one reason why we had to slow it down pretty quick."

"So I'm all right now?" Marco asked, keeping still and studying the tape holding his arm straight on an I.V. board.

"You're stable." Roy admitted. "Dr. Brackett will give you a good going over once we reach Rampart to see if there are gonna be any secondary cardiac side effects from the shock you took from the power lines. He'll look for signs of internal damage coming from other areas. Your muscles might have suffered circulation problems that won't pop up until later. You remember those spasms that kept coming?"

"How can I forget? They hurt like h*ll. Now I know what Cap went through when he messed with a power line."

"That's a good sign."

"What, that my pain was so bad?" Lopez grinned faintly.

"No, it's the fact that you remember what happened to you at the scene that's good." DeSoto replied.

"Oh..." said Marco. "I remember a few other things, too."

Roy shifted in his seat, staying respectfully quiet while he kept an eye on Marco's live EKG monitor. Not a single PVC was marching across the screen as it had been doing by the dozens before his emergency cardioversion. Feeling confident on the strength of the turn around, Roy closed up and packed away the defibrillator resting between Marco's legs and set it onto the rider's bench next to him. Then he folded his hands together and just listened, meeting Marco's eyes gently with his own.

"Do you believe in the afterlife, Roy?" Marco said after a few seconds.

"I do. You don't grow up going to services once a day and twice on Sunday without having a pretty strong faith in an idea like that." Roy grinned.

"I'm Catholic. Maybe not as devoted as you and Joanne are to the Lutheran faith. Mama and I go to church once a month, maybe twice if we can afford it, and go cook for the congregation. In fact, we've just finished organizing a dinner benefit ....for Christmas coming up in the next couple of days. But what I'm saying is.... I think I died, Roy. Maybe just for a split second. Because whereever I was..I saw my father, as clearly as you and I are seeing each other right now. And he's been dead for twenty five years. It was so real. I could smell his cologne...I could feel the heat coming from his cheek when I tried to reach out and touch him,  
and it made me cry, Roy."

"Hypoxia does funny things to the mind when a person's in shock.  
You had a short time in the squad where you weren't getting enough oxygen. We had to hold you down to force some air into ya until your color pinked up again. You didn't die, Marco. You were conscious the whole time I was with you. This EKG strip shows that you had a constant heart beat throughout your treatment. Take a look..." and he pressed the red gridded white paper roll into Marco's hands and he helped him scroll through it to the point where the bigeminy was shocked into a sinus rhythm.  
"But it doesn't matter if you were clinically dead or not. That's not important. If you know you saw your dead father, then you did. Perhaps it was your mind's way of getting you through a life threatening crisis that was at the time, extremely unpleasant physically. A self preservation instinct, if you will. But the experience you had holds the same significant meaning regardless of what brought it on, Marco. And you're gonna have to figure out what its impact is gonna be and find out why it happened to you in order to understand it fully through a way that works best for you."

"What did you feel, Roy?" Lopez said, fingering the place on the EKG strip where the tracing had gone from a life threat to a normal state.

"I'm afraid I don't understand." DeSoto admitted, leaning on his knees with his palms.

"Last year, you were dead for several minutes after you hit that line and fell off the roof during that house fire. Karen the trainee said that you had no heartbeat at all when she found you and brought you back using the defibrillator. Did you see anything like what I saw, during it?"

Roy looked down at the question, studying his shoes, when he got Lopez's reference. He laced his fingers together thoughtfully in front of him. "I remember feeling scared for the woman in that bedroom with me. I wasn't thinking clearly about the fact that the ladder under my foot wasn't one of ours. It was a stupid mistake. I was surprised I wasn't written up for it later on after I recovered."

Marco heard the sirens over their heads shut off as they entered Rampart's back driveway from the boulevard. "Roy..." he insisted,  
wanting an answer before it was too late to get one.

DeSoto replied. "Easy, don't get worked up. It'll mess up your blood pressure.  
I'll answer your question." And he started to take down Marco's . from the ceiling hook, transferring them to the cot pole. "I saw someone that day, yes." he whispered. "And ...it was just a little boy. A stranger,  
with...with....with red hair, about four years old. And this is the odd part, Marco.  
I knew ...without a shred of a doubt, that that little boy standing in front of me.  
was going be my future son in two years time. A second son for me and Joanne, slated to be born on Christmas Eve.....1977."

Lopez's mouth flopped open. "That's next year.."

"How's that for a mysterious life after death experience....?" Roy asked seriously. "Count your blessings, Marco. You could've had a vision like mine." he said quietly. "Joanne and I still don't know what to make of it."

Lopez crossed himself and said a silent benediction.

Soon, no further talk was possible on the subject because rushing orderlies pulled open the doors of the Mayfair once it completed its backing maneuver, to wheel Marco into Dr. Brackett's awaiting treatment room.

---------------------------------------------

Photo: Roy bagging a patient inside a Mayfair.

Photo: An overhead shot of the squad and ambulance parked in the emergency entrance lot.

Photo: Rampart's ambulance entrance door, open next to the squad.

*  
From: "Champagne Scott" Date: Mon Jan 10, 2005 6:31 pm Subject: A Matter of Perspective

Captain Stanley collapsed the antennae of his walkie talkie radio and he put it into his pocket with a sad sigh of discovery.

The helicopter pilot had found the third car victim.

He lay face up and battered at the mouth of a culvert in the shallows one fifth of a mile away from the accident site.  
There was no mistaking the pale china blue rictor of death and his fatal color. "Kelly! Stoker! Let's give it up!" He shouted to his two searching firefighters struggling through the river channel's brush and debris islands with probe poles lofted straight up over their heads. "He's been spotted by Chopper Ten.  
And there's absolutely nothing in the world we can do for him." he motioned grimly, peeling off his helmet and gloves.

Hank tried not to look at the heavy disappointment that bloomed over his men's faces.

Cap knelt down near the high edge of the spillway over the rappelling ropes hanging over the concrete wall. "I've been ordered to let L.A.P.D. and the coroner's department handle his body's recovery. They say they're gonna need the area around him intact and undisturbed for photos." he told Stoker and Chet quietly. "They just found a pack of cocaine in the trunk."

"We hear ya, Cap. Where is he?! We don't see him. " Chet yelled back. "Don't wanna step too close." he frowned, fighting to get out of the thick bulrushes and rhododendron tangles choking the riverway.

"In the storm drain, pal. To your one o'clock. Up on a small waterfall.  
Looks like your way back to me's entirely clear of automobile debris so don't worry about that." hollered Cap.

Kelly nodded, finally finding an open space in the wild growth to push through. He took both Cap's offered grip and the rope and hauled himself up onto dry land.

Mike Stoker climbed onto the rusting gate covering the water redirect to catch a glimpse of the dead man for reporting's sake. Then he accepted Chet and Hank's firm hands for a pull out of the river basin.

"How's Johnny's victim?" Mike asked Cap, scraping the scummy mud off of his shoes on a twisted rock as he retrieved their climbing ropes into potable coils.

"Stable. His rig left for Rampart soon after Roy's did. Marco's still doing fine.  
He's awake now, and talking..."

Chet started to open his mouth.

Cap stalled his question with a pointed index finger. "And yes, we'll be taking the engine there. I told L.A. that we'll be 10-7 for an hour and a half until Lopez's replacement can join up with us at the station."

Chet grinned, wiping muck off his chin. "Cap, taking the pumper to the hospital without an official reason to? I'm surprised at you." he chided teasingly.

Hank's eyes demonstrated being put on the spot and he cleared his throat subconsciously. "I don't need one. I'm a fire department captain.  
My station can be anywhere I put it in our service area. " he gruffed. "Unofficially, I'm doing it for a short welfare visit for morale's sake to cheer myself up. Now get moving and drive the squad in. Stoker can finish stowing the gear. He's a little faster than you."

"Yes, sir."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sleep would claim him, if he let it. Marco had only to close his eyes and lean back against the softness of the gurney's pillow.

But he couldn't.

He felt Roy's hand on his stomach, taking a count of his respirations yet again as he drifted.  
Marco studied the age lines wrinkling on his coworker's forehead as DeSoto tipped his watch into a better viewing angle but they blurred into nonsensicality. "..ohh...." he groaned, his arms and legs jumping underneath the covers.

Biting his lip, Roy held Marco's I.V.s in the other hand so the ambulance attendants would be free to transfer Lopez onto the treatment bed that Brackett had already wheel locked into position. "Easy, Marco.  
Almost there.." he said with another gentle touch on his patched in shoulder.

Marco barely heard him.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More than anyone else knew; more than he himself knew, so much had changed within him, in ways that Lopez was only beginning to understand.

The need for rest weighed heavily across his chest. But Marco knew why he put it off, why he tried to forestall its inevitable approach.

When he had been between twisted heartbeats, there had been the smallest possible glimpse, as his heart had passed through chaos back into shocked order, of an instant that had been both remembrance and eternal non-time. For just that brief flash of consciousness, he had seen that which had been shown to him, so long ago in early childhood. Warm, happy experiences of being snuggled in the firm security of his father's loving arms as he laughed, while being tickled to death.

Lopez closed his eyes, ignoring Kel Brackett's questions and shaking, willing himself towards that memory path again.

He had seen his father, his mother's beloved, inside of there. In a moment snatched from those years forever lost to him, in those few seconds, when Bernardo had still been alive. Bernardo had turned to Marco, one hand reaching back to his, smiling as if he were about to say something...

There hadn't been time enough to hear what his words would have been. The vision of his face had gone as quickly as it had appeared; Marco hadn't really even been conscious of it, until the jolting shock of the defibrillator came shooting through his body..

Only now, when he could allow his thoughts to sort themselves out, had he remembered completely, what he had seen. What had been granted to him.

Marco wondered what it meant. Perhaps nothing, an oxygen and blood starved hallucination, perhaps a gift, a blessing.. Marco smiled ruefully, to appease a suddenly worried Kel and Roy before they resorted to a pain check. "I'm o.k...I'm just a little tired. Gimme a sec to get myself together." he whispered.  
"And then I'll try to cooperate..." he grunted.

He saw their faces move away into a paramedic/doctor consultation.

It would have been just like Bernardo Lopez to have given him something like that, something that would enable him to go forward and accomplish what he had to afterwards.

Falling now, Marco let himself sink. Toward that bright world, the other one,  
inside of him, where he could hear the tender words that had been-- and always were-- about to be spoken to him.

--------------------------------------------------------

"Kel." said Dixie, lifting her head. "Looks like he's going out."

Dr. Brackett moved to Marco's head, peeling a penlight out of one pocket.  
He ran its white beam over his pupils lightly before he stepped closer to examine the extruding EKG strip running out of the monitor.  
"Go ahead and get another pressure, Dix, but I think he's ok. His eyes seem like they're in rapid eye motion, like they do when someone's in a deep sleep state." he remarked in surprise. "Hmm, that's something that getting an electrical current overload won't account for."

Roy crossed his arms over his elbows, fidgetting, but he let himself smile.  
"It's ok, doc. Marco always falls asleep like this after an injury. Even for minor ones. He did this the last time he was in here, too."

"Really.." Brackett chuckled.

"As I recall...Last time was just last year from that accident at the gas station?"  
Dixie remembered.

"Uh huh." Roy replied. "Marco never seems to ever pass out at all. He only does so when things are getting really bad like when his air bottle runs out in a really hot fire."

"Oh, now I remember Marco's strange tendency. Mike said he snored up a storm. Morton said he got overly frustrated, until he finally tipped Marco's head back over the end of the table long enough to finish examining him." Kel shared about Morton.

Roy just nodded, doing the same action to prevent any problems after he transferred Lopez's oxygen supply line to the humidified port in the wall.

"Ok." Kel sighed.. folding up his stethoscope and putting it back into his lab coat. "His lungs sound almost entirely clear now. Dix, call the lab.. I want a chest X-ray and a full twelve lead cardiac study. Draw blood enough for a BUN and creatinine, CBC, cardiac electrolyte serum, blood glucose, and have them get some clotting indexes in case he needs surgery for that finger reduction later. Also, grab a UA by centesis after I get done giving him this sedative to calm these tremors down."

"Right away, Kel. His pressure's 100/76." Dix reported before moving to the phone to order the tests Marco needed.

Kel glanced up. "Roy, you say he wasn't thrown far? I'm not noting any signs of abdominal tenderness or guarding here." Dr. Brackett said palpating Marco's stomach carefully.

"That's right. Only about ten feet backwards from the car, onto some patchy grass and dirt. He was using the K-12 when it happened."

"Hmm, we got lucky there.." he said, moving on to look at the fractured finger on Marco's hand. "This doesn't look so bad either. The burns on his hands aren't even blistering."

"How's his neurological status?" said Dixie, returning to the bedside.

"Good to excellent. We got pretty philosophical on the way in."

"About what?" Kel asked.

"Marco thought he had a near death experience, doc. He said that he saw his dad. Is such a thing possible with his kind of situation? I mean, his heart rhythm didn't ever stop on us."

"It is. He couldn't have been breathing too well with a tach rate that fast. Slight hypoxia is all that's needed to cause changes in the brain enough for someone to feel they've had an out of body experience."

Roy grinned. "Are you saying that you don't believe in all the stories of people seeing things after they've been dead a short time?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." Kel said. "I'm too practical, I guess,  
to believe in such nonsense."

"Don't knock it until you've been there, doc." Roy said, without looking away from Kel's skeptical eyes.

"You mean, you had a life after death encounter Roy?" asked Kel,  
raising his eyebrows in surprise.

"I did. When I was in his shoes, last year." DeSoto said, gesturing at Marco's sleeping form.

"I didn't read anything about that on your chart, Roy."

"That's because...." Roy started up loudly..."..that's because.."  
he whispered so he wouldn't wake Marco up." I thought I was nuts at the time."

"Why would you think that? Who did you see in yours?"

"My future son." DeSoto said with tightly clenched lips. "And I'll also tell you, doc, that my experience wasn't entirely all warm and rosy like Marco's." Roy had to force himself to get out of Brackett's light while he completed Marco's care."I felt very uncomfortable seeing him."

"Oh.. Uh...Sorry about that. Well...don't worry, Roy. It's over and done with. Uh...We'll keep up both of Marco's . at a rate sufficient to offset myoglobinuric renal failure. I'm not going to allow any fasciotomies that might be needed on his arms because of compartment syndrome developing later on just because of an unstable B/P that we can easily stabilize now. Here, help me turn him onto his side for those coming chest plates. Then we can get his course of meds going before he transfers to the ICU."

"The guys'll wanna see him, doc,.." DeSoto insisted. "..before he goes upstairs."

"I'll allow that. There'll be time while we wait for the x-rays to develop."

"I guess I'd better collect Johnny and go meet the gang outside before they get crazy ideas into their heads about trying to pile on in here." said Roy, excusing himself.

"I'll let you know when we're set." said Brackett. "Tell them Marco's gonna be fine in a couple of weeks. Especially since he has no keraunoparalysis."

"I will."

Roy left the treatment room to go stand by the ambulance entrance to meet the rest of the gang. A quick status check to L.A. showed them as already en route to Rampart Hospital.

He flagged down Johnny as soon as he reappeared from his treatment room and moments later, DeSoto was telling him the good news about Marco.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Doctor Brackett looking uneasy about a subject matter.

Photo: Roy in a treatment room in closeup.

Photo: Dixie bending over a bed near an I.V. setup.

Photo: Engine 51 driving right at you.

*  
From: "Cory Anda" Date: Mon Jan 17, 2005 7:33 pm Subject: The Gift of Life.

"Guys...Set the kettle down over there on the back stove. Yeah, that's right. Then Marissa can get the soup going and still have the front burners free for saute'ing." suggested Marco from his comfortable chair in the center of the spacious room at Father Murphy's Catholic Charities Soup Kitchen. "We are gonna be cooking for a hundred people before sundown, and not just for a few dozen or so."

Johnny mumbled around the fake smile he wore for show for the hovering chattering church women who were volunteering for the charity's dinner. "Roy,..are you regretting helping out as much as I am right now?" he said as he and Roy grunted under the heavy weight of the enormous soup kettle that they were maneuvering between them.

Roy, chided his partner, flashing a one hundred percent genuine grin. "Where's that holiday spirit Johnny? I know it's in there somewhere. You know we were the only ones able to help Marco out like this on such short notice. The rest of the guys are still pulling a shift at the station. He's still under exertion restrictions, remember?"

Johnny's face locked down even tighter on his glued in smile. "For a tiny jolt taken from a power pole? Roy, your defibrillating counter shock mixed up more of his brain and cardiac cells than that ever could of done."

"Shh, do you want him to find out that meeting his father in the afterlife was actually an artifact from the paddles?  
That'd doom any faith he has in the church and then some."  
DeSoto reasoned, keeping his voice down to a quiet friendly sounding whisper. "Just pipe down and let's get this done. They're opening the doors to the streets in an hour and we'd better be ready with things on time."

"Ok, ok. Just...just let me get better leverage down here. Ugh.. Tip it back.. I got it on the bunsen coil. Right in the middle." Gage strained. Then he said a little louder, "How's this, Marco?"

"Perfect, amigo. Gracias." he said amid a chorus of gratitude from all the women.

Soon the massive metal cauldron was surrounded by the bright colorful aprons of the shelter volunteers descending in mass,  
as they began dumping pounds of chicken, noodles, vegetables and boullion into the pot. Rapidly, the gas line fire was poofed into life underneath it.

Marco Lopez looked up from the hot chocolate one of the church ladies had given him to go along with the afghan now wrapping around his shoulders. "Thanks guys. the neighborhood women and I really appreciate you coming out tonight.." he said sipping from his steaming mug. "Here, take a break. Looks like I got a whole pot to myself.." he said shoving the cocoa tray and mug stack closer to Roy and Johnny with a slippered foot. He plunked down his own mug and Marco reached over to begin peeling potatoes at top speed with a paring knife.

"Ah,, easy with that..." Gage said, pulling the blade out of Marco's hand. "You're gonna cut yourself rushing like that.  
Here, I'll do it.."

"Thanks, Johnny.." and Lopez rose from his chair painfully to move over to the floor bound soup pot to do some light stirring with its three foot long steel cast ladle while the ladies around him filled it with delectables.

Roy grinned. "He's not on Valium you know." he said sotto voce to Gage. "Just some Tylenol 3 for his muscle aches."

"Oh, hush. He's was napping five minutes ago. He might still be groggy enough to get a little clumsy."

"Yes, mother Gage.." teased DeSoto, taking up a second peeler to help Johnny add to the pile going into the soup pot. "Your paramedic side's showing itself again."

"So's yours. You kept him from doing any lifting at all today."

"Then we're in the same boat now, aren't we?...Relax, Johnny,  
in an hour, we'll be eating a truly well cooked meal with all the street folks and their families and we'll forget all about our sore backs."

"Do me a favor and keep reminding me of that, ok? Right now my back's talking something fierce, all over that supposed angelic little voice of mine that's trying to praise me for doing all of this on our only day off." Gage said, stretching out a kink or two.

"Consider it done."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Darkness was falling softly over Los Angeles County when Father Murphy finally threw open the doors of his charity to the line slowly straggling in from the avenue. He laughed heartily in his Santa's suit for all the kids shyly coming in with their guardians to share the rare seven course feast.

Marissa, a red haired bubbly helper, threw off her apron just in time to fan out coloring books and crayons for the youngest comers along with a wrapped present or two for each, containing toys that would survive their lives spent on the move and on the streets. "Here you go, loves. Come on in where it's warm. Dinner's almost ready." she said.

And soon, the tiny brick hall was filled with people sitting down in front of the many plates and silverware lined up along the simple folding tables setting in rows before the kitchen's open counter.

Roy and Johnny and Marco were just about to duck out of the way of the volunteers running by with steaming foil pans full of food when Father Murphy dragged all three of them to the front of the room before a tiny rainbow lit white Christmas tree.  
"Folks, please. Can I have your attention for just a bit before the nightly prayer?" The Santa garbed padre held them firmly in place with a friendly arm over their shoulders.

Ski capped heads looked up everywhere and all three firemen immediately flushed at being an unexpected center of attention.

"Now for this year's Christmas feast, we've been blessed with the presence of some of Marco Lopez's closest firefighter friends, who've been helping us tirelessly all morning and through most of the day. Everybody, a big warm welcome for Roy DeSoto and John Gage, from Station 51 located in the suburb of Carson. This is their first year volunteering with us and I'd like to say, I couldn't have asked for a more dedicated pair of workers than they. It's been said no one works harder than a firefighter and I've been overwhelmingly ...moved.. to find that this wonderful sentiment, is an absolute G*d given truth. Roy and Johnny everybody.."

Marco Lopez, with tears of gratitude in his eyes, starting clapping first for them with warm nods of appreciation, which only increased his coworkers' embarrassment at the memory of their earlier grumbling.

Soon, shrill cheers and applause from all the volunteers and diners alike, nearly brought the hall down. Roy and Johnny found that they couldn't escape fast enough into the sanctuary in back of the kitchen to recover their inner dignity.

Marissa, the street child activity coordinator winked at them as she handed them two full plates, "Welcome to the family, boys. Here,  
eat up and refill your plates as often as you like. Nobody goes hungry on Christmas Eve."

"Wow,..." said Johnny.. "I...we., I mean, Roy and I ..sure appreciate this, Marissa. Thanks."

"My pleasure.. Excuse me fellas, but my place is with the kids.  
I'm nanny to them all whenever they come to Father Murphy's so their real parents can relax and take a break for a while.  
And now, this is time for yours. Don't worry about doing any dishes at all. We've hired out some of the city's crime serving teens for that task. It'll be part of their community service obligations debt to the police and Ju-vee Hall to help us out tonight."

Johnny and Roy nodded their thanks and they settled in to the folding chairs Marco managed to petal in around the warm soup pot. It was almost surreal to have a three foot high cauldron of food steaming fragrantly in front of them and they revelled in it. "Thanks, Marissa.  
Glad we could be here." said Roy. "This is a wonderful charity you're offering up to all these street folks." he said shyly. "I've driven by this hall everyday on my way to work and I never even knew this place existed. We're.  
very touched by your intense sense of dedication and commitment, ma'am."

"Ah,, it's G*d's work, not mine, that I do, Mr. DeSoto. I'm just a messenger and caregiver to the youngest ones and I, just simply, try be there whenever I can. It's folk like you and your coworkers who are the real life savers. I just keep people on track going about the business of wanting to live that life day to day, in truly bad times." Marissa said thoughtfully. "If you would excuse me now?.. Little Stevie's flagging me down."

All three of the Station 51 gang rose marginally from their chairs as the cheerful young woman departed for the main dining area and the children.

Soon, well fed and content, the three off duty firefighters joined all the volunteers in handing out presents to those who didn't have any yet from Father Murphy's red velvet Santa's bag.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the kitchen, two scruffy teenaged boys ate from the serving platters greedily.

"Is he watching?" said the first to the second.

The dark haired teenaged parolee casually eyed the police officer standing in the main hall against a wall. The officer was laughing along with the others as presents were opened and displayed.

"No, man. He's feeling the Christmas spirit too much to notice us."

"Cool.. Then we can have a little fun." said the first, taller teen.

The second eyed his juvenile hall roommate distrustfully. "What kind of fun?"

"The walking on fire kind. I betcha you can't do what I can do..Let's see what kind of cajones you have, Punto."

"Hey, who are you calling Punto, Gordohead? I can do anything you can do."

"All right..." and the oldest reached into his jeans pocket around his sink apron and pulled out a dime. Lightly, he tossed it into the deep french fryer that was full of boiling liquid lard. "Get it, and it's yours. A symbol that earns my protection for you from the others who are beating you up every night in the exercise cell."

Familiar with gang initiation and pledging, the second reached for a scoop wire spoon for the task.

The first boy grabbed the second boy's wrist. "Not with that.  
With your bare hand."

The second teen's eyes got real big. "Are you plain loco? I'll get seriously roasted!"

"No you won't. You see, I'm sharper than your average jefe, caballero.  
Use this on your skin first. Watch me, and then it's your turn."  
said the light eyed leader boy.

He reached up onto a spice shelf over the cooker and pulled down a jar of vasoline. He liberally spread it thickly over his arm and fingers, until he was wearing a glove of goo. Then, lightning fast, he plunged his hand into the hot bubbling vat of grease.

The leader's companion gasped, but the boy's hand came up rapidly, with the dime, dripping but unharmed. The silver coin plunked with a flip toss onto the countertop, following a string of mirthless laughter. The leader had enjoyed horrifying his audience. "Your turn, amigo. Nothing to it."

"You're pure loco, man. I'm not doing it!" gaped the younger of the two toughies.

"Does this feel burned to you?" said the oldest, gripping the younger's hair in his greasy hand. "I'm offering you a one time only...offer for my personal kind of protection against your enemies. You know you'll die without it, despite of a fuzz being your shadow. This is your last chance and I suggest you take it,.." he spat into his ear. "..friend..."

"Ok.. ok. ok.." bubbled the second teen, in fear, and he pulled his head free from the leader's grip just before the police officer's eyes glanced once in their direction in a bored presence check and away again.

He reached for the jar of vasoline with a shaky hand.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A blood curdling scream from the back kitchen sent the adults into a scrambling flurry for the kitchen annex.

Johnny, Roy and Marco were just in time to see a young teen aged boy dropping a steam scalded dime limply from his fingers right after he violently pulled his arm out of the french fryer.

A plume of grease arched onto the floor and splashed the simmering soup kettle's burner and the amber liquid immediately caught on fire and crawled rapidly along the floor tiles, igniting an even bigger puddle pooled there in front of the grinning older teenager.

"Somebody get a fire extinguisher!" yelled Johnny.  
"Marco, call the fire department!"

Roy tackled and then flung a towel over the screaming boy's arm to snuff out the grease burning there that hadn't yet reached any skin. Then he pulled him away from the flaming part of the floor to the water sink where he quickly flooded the teen's fingers with a stream from the cold tap.

"What a stupid monkey!" celebrated the leader teen. "You forgot to let go of the dime and it burned ya anyway!" he laughed at his younger companion.

Johnny heard a commotion from the hall and accepted the fire extinguisher that Father Murphy tossed him, quickly ripping free its nozzle tie. He was about to use it when he saw what kind of extinguisher it was. "Roy, this is a water can.. We can't use this at all.." and he threw it away in disgust, dancing away from the flames. "We gotta get everyone outta here. If that soup ring's gas line flares...."

"I'm on it." and DeSoto rush guided his stunned, only finger seared teenager out of the room on Marco's heels.

Johnny threw away the useless extinguisher and whirled to push the laughing teen ahead of him into the police shaparone's arms; ultimately to the front exit of the dining hall.

"Merry Christmas, Mister Cop and Fireman. " mocked the leader teen. "Hey, Father! How's that for a holy light?" he chuckled, maniacally pleased, throwing a hand back at the spreading grease fire.  
"I kinda like it better than that paltry excuse of a Christmas tree in the dining room."

Father Murphy's face barely contained a puzzled incomprehension before an urgent panic to evacuate the street folk diners took it over.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marissa stood by the doors, holding them open as panicking people fled the smoke filling charity hall. As men, women and children ran by,  
she made sure she silently head counted.

Father Murphy had already lined up the first group along the far side curb, checking on how bad some might have been effected by the thick smoke. He had torn off his Santa's hat and beard and was running from person to person, who was sitting or lying on the pavement, or coughing violently.

"Is that all of them?" Marco shouted to Marissa over the screams.

"Oh, my G*d..Meghan and Stevie are still inside. They were at the head table!" and Marissa struggled to get past Marco to go back inside to look for them.

"No.. get out of here. Johnny and Roy are checking for any stragglers."

"But.."

"Just go, Marissa. We know what we're doing!"

She back away, reluctantly and was gone.

Right then, Johnny and Roy shoved the officer and the two juvenile delinquents out the main glass doors and into Marco's arms,  
exiting, too, from the black smoked cloud still regurgitating from the kitchen with a vengeance. "Did you manage to get to a phone, Marco? Here, grab him. He's getting all worked up emotionally."

"Yeah. I got through.*cough* I got him. Is that everyone?"

"We think so. Getting too hard to see anything."

Distracted, Marco and the two paramedics bore the grease singed boy away from the hall and suddenly to the ground when the overwhelmed boy fainted from psychogenic shock.

When no one was looking, Marissa ran back into the kitchen,  
full of fear for the mother and child still missing on her own initiative.

Using her damp apron as a mask over her face in a desperate attempt at helping out best as she could,  
she disappeared into the murk, unwitnessed.

Roy and Johnny's heads snapped up from the teenager lying on the road when a soot covered mother, carrying a kicking little boy in holiday green in her arms, staggered against the glass of the door.

"Marco..make sure he wakes up..." said Roy, pointing down to the silent shivering teenager still cradling his fingers.

Gage and Johnny pulled open the superheated door and dragged out the gasping mother and writhing child, both pulling them away from danger. Fire was now becoming just visible on the roofing tiles, glowing over the rusty bricks.

Sound of sirens covered those of the hungry flames eating the interior.

Johnny tried to snatch the child out of the woman's hands.  
"Let go of him! Let me take a look at him!" He said peeling off her fingers one by one, trying to reach his head and neck. "He's having trouble breathing!"

The mother coughed violently. "He..'s....might be choking! He was eating potatoes when the scream and smoke startled him! I tried...* cough* to do what I ....." Her voice cut off as smoke inhalation strangled her into speechless silence. Her own breathing trouble loosened her grip and the purpling boy tumbled into Johnny's arms.

Father Murphy ran over and drew Meghan's panicky attention to his kindly face while Roy and Johnny worked swiftly on the little boy.

Scooping Stevie in front of him, Johnny began firm thrusts with closed fists repeatedly on the boy's abdomen, trying to dislodge whatever food was blocking the boy's airway,  
dangling him in front of his own legs in a back to stomach hug.

Nothing worked.

A squeal of tires rousted DeSoto's attention from the boy when he recognized the sound of rescue squad doors slamming.  
"Over here! Foreign body obstruction. We need the peds kit!"

Engine 51 had come along with Squad 18.

"Roy's he's out...." panted Johnny. "I'm not getting it.  
Catch his head. Catch his head. Get him down."

DeSoto helped his partner straighten the now unconscious boy onto his back and he quickly got to the boy's head,  
looking to see if he could spot anything in the glare of the engine's headlights in the boy's mouth. "Nothing yet."

Johnny continued to apply sharp heimlich maneuvers,  
even as he pulled up the boy's shirt for clearer access.

"Magills! Small! And suction!" Roy shouted to the paramedics rushing to their side. He got the gear box he needed.

Snatching up the long scissor like snubbed instrument, Roy threaded its gripping shaft down Stevie's throat after nodding to Johnny to stop his clearing attempts for a moment.

He pulled out a chicken bone.

Gage pressed down on the boy's ribcage and air hissed out sharply. "That was it. Pulse?"

Roy felt for one even as one of Squad 18's medics grabbed an oxygenated child's ambu bag and oral airway and started using them to get effective breaths into the boy.  
DeSoto shook his head. "No carotid."

Gage began one handed chest compressions, while the second medic began to hail Rampart on the biophone.

Captain Stanley ran up to Marco by the teenager. "Who else is there besides this teen boy and the child and mother?"  
he said laying down an O2 apparatus for Marco to use on the young man.

"Maybe a few minor SI's on the curbside, Cap. I think we got everyone out." Lopez said. "Careful in there.  
Grease fire and an active floor gas line from a soup cooker! We didn't have time to get the main breaker shut off.."

"Ok, pal. Hang tight. I've another two alarms on the way.  
Including L.A. City. We're on the edge of their jurisdiction out here." he said eyeing the brick church like building that housed the burning soup kitchen. Hank then called for the gas company to shut off service to the entire city block over the engine's radio microphone.

Right then, Father Murphy looked up from where Meghan was sobbing and reaching for Stevie. "Captain.. I...I- l.. don't see Marissa.. She...she'd never abandon a child in trouble.  
In fact she'd be the last one to leave them.."

"Are you saying that there might still be someone inside of there?" Cap clarified.

"Yes!" said the padre.

"Chet, Moreno...gear up! There's possibly one more victim inside the building. Keep in mind that there's still a flowing gas line some where near a soup set up and a grease fire along the floor. Be extra careful searching around in there! You have two minutes."  
Cap ordered. "Then we pull out and wait for backup. This one's going vertical by the looks of it. Stoker! Back her up a hundred feet. This building's got a false front!"

"Right, Cap." said the engineer.

Kelly nodded at his orders and the pair of firemen swiftly geared up into SCBA bottles and masks. With a charged inch and a half, they knocked out the front window glass and entered the dining hall following a covering fan of protective water.

Gage and Roy traded tasks, back and forth, on the boy's CPR while they let Squad 18 handle the child's main care treatment, working quietly through all his resuscitation medications after they'd received terse medical orders from Dr. Joe Early. They paused only for three quarters of a minute in their efforts when Cap had them all evacuate the front sidewalk for the opposite one to get them out of a potential debris zone.

##Squad 18. Defibrillate. 100 watt seconds. As many times as it takes. Don't wait for an ET intubation. Sounds like you've got more than enough hands helping out.## the doc said as he heard an off duty Roy and Johnny confirming and reaffirming verbally how they were coordinating efforts on the child.

"10-4, Rampart. Stand by for an EKG if we're successful."  
reported Squad 18's head paramedic.

"Roy..still getting a pulse with my compressions?"  
Gage asked in the background.

"Yeah. They're going good. His airway's still clear. No food matter down here at all. Ok, Marv. We're standing off for ya." Roy replied, raising the ambu off Stevie for the countershocking with the low powered paddles. Johnny lifted his palm away from Stevie's sternum, making sure that Meghan wasn't touching her son with his other one, for the first shock to come.

"Oh!" cried Meghan, gripping her oxygen cannula'd face in her hands in worried despair at the sight of her boy jumping convulsively.

Father Murphy hugged her tightly.  
"The Lord's working through these men, Meghan. If they're granted, Stevie will be returned to us very soon. I've seen these kind men working before."

On the second shock, Stevie gasped and his hands twitched on the cool gritty sidewalk and Roy's smile announced the presence of a very viable heartbeat under the grip he had on the boy's neck.

Meghan immediately began sobbing in relief and Father Murphy bent his head in a prayer of thanksgiving.

Roy swiftly patched the almost suffocated boy into the heart monitor and Johnny helped Marv spike an I.V. for the child's continuing maintenance meds.

Then they stood up, "You good here now, guys?"  
asked Gage.

The two medics nodded. "Yeah. Thanks, fellas. See you later at the station." answered Marv. "Stan, why don't you check on the teenager over there. The fireman with him's indicating that he's awake and fully conscious now." replied Squad 18's head medic.

Marv's partner left to start the teenager's care.

"Ok.." and Gage and DeSoto rose to stand by Cap,  
who was studying the building, intently eyeing the hose feeding into the shattered window frame.

Marco had already joined Hank, too. And he was biting his lip.

Lopez said, "Roy, Johnny.. Carlos Moreno and Chet have gone in after Marissa."

"What?!" Gage said, whirling around. "I didn't see her go back inside...I thought I saw her out here with you, Marco."

"You did. She was out here at first. Father Murphy gave Cap a run down on her personality type about not ever leaving behind any kids. So everyone's assuming she went back in to look for Meghan and Stevie here.  
And for you two. " Lopez said, filling Roy and Johnny in.

"That crazy, stupid girl. She's gonna get herself killed. That fire's hotter than anything..!" Gage fretted. "Cap, do you mind if Roy and I throw on a spare set of coats and tanks at all to be your second team in stand by?"

"Can't harm anything. I'll add you to the board. Gear up but hang back for now. Put on trousered boots over those jeans! Lopez can help me keep watch."

"Thanks, Cap." Gage replied for both Roy and himself.

An ominous rumble made Cap's head snap up.  
He brought his walkie talkie to his lips. "Kelly, Moreno.  
Out. The upper story's about to go!" he ordered.

There was no reply. Cap immediately frowned.  
"Can't be that noisy in there. It's all one room, right?"

"That's right.." said Roy, buckling up his turnout.

"Kelly! Moreno! Respond HT!" Hank tried again.

A small roof explosion flattened Marco, Cap, Roy and Johnny against the engine in a tangle of protective crouches. He was about to send in Roy and Johnny when the false front of the building finally gave way under the heat of the fire and came tumbling down onto the front sidewalk in a pile of sparking black bricks.

Roy was about to go rushing inside when he saw Chet Kelly, helmetless and gloveless, carrying Marissa in his arms towards the open air. Her white kitchen clothes were in shreds.

Hank and Stoker both rushed forward to help their dazed coworker walk over the fallen building debris with his unconscious burden.

Roy reached for her head and chest for signs of life.

Kelly wasn't feeling his reddened and blistered palms one iota, even as the others were wincing for him. "Roy, she's alive. Breathing, too."

Where's Moreno?" barked Cap.

"He ducked out the back way. He was too far from the front door. I was closer." Chet mumbled, stumbling slightly, licking a contused lip."Father Murphy.. I got her out.."

"That you did, son. Now sit down and let me bundle you up until your paramedic friend's ready to see you."  
the father replied.

"Johnny! Tank up and go check out Kelly's story. Meet up with Moreno. Radio me immediately the first second you find him." Cap called out behind him. "Then clear the h*ll out of there until the other alarms get on scene."

"I'm gone.." said Gage.

And soon, he was.

Photo: Soup kitchen store front.

Photo : Bums eating dinner at folding tables.

Photo: Kids piled over coloring books and art stuff.

Photo: A bowl of chicken soup in the hands of someone.

Photo: Kitchen charity workers slaving over a stove of food.

Photo: A collapsing false front at night on fire.

Photo: Woman doing CPR on a boy.

Photo: Roy, Stoker and Cap helping Chet get a woman out.

*  
From: Katherine Bird kathbird01y... Date: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:21 pm Subject: That Molten Snare...

Johnny Gage darted quickly around the burning brick city building.  
He kept one eye on the roofline, making sure that nothing that had a wall was gonna fall on top of him. He sang out over the HT frequency as he went. "HT 51 to 51-Moreno. What's your 10-20? Over..." he shouted over the roar of the fire jutting from the lower windows. His voice sounded muted through his air mask.

Water fog from the overhead ladder nozzle from Pumper Eight broke out into a steaming bouquet over his head, and followed his progress. Gratefully, Johnny tucked his radio under a flap of his jacket and continued broadcasting and sweeping a flashlight from side to side in front of him to attract Moreno's attention.

A smudge slightly less dark than the rest of the fire lit surroundings separated itself from between two cars, shedding brick fragments.

"Carlos?!" shouted Gage, hurrying to that location. "You ok?  
Kelly said you bugged out to the rear..."

Coughing, the air masked fireman ripped off his own face mask when the air fizzled out on his tank, giving a cut throat signal to Gage with some fingers across his neck. Johnny offered him his mask for a few clean breaths of untainted air. " *choke* I'm fine. D*mned grease slick. I slipped following Chet and ran out of escape time or I would've helped with getting her free. She still alive?"

"Yeah.. Roy's got her. What happened to Chet's hands?" said,  
Gage, guiding the exhausted Moreno safely back to the path he'd found under the water bucket.

"He got down on the floor to see better and crawled right into that hot grease in the kitchen. It set his gloves on fire. We got them off as fast as we could. What happened in there? I thought you and Roy were working a dinner."

"We were, pal. Only a pair of obnoxious teen gangers decided to turn stupid with some kind of twisted initiation rite and there you have it...." he gestured grandly to the now fully involved structure.

"What did they do?"

"Dared each other to stick their hands into an active french fryer using vasoline."

"Stupid!"

"I know. That's what Roy and I thought. And look what it's gonna cost Marco's congregation and the city to repair.."  
He took a breath himself off the SCBA before he broadcast out to Cap on the curb down the alleyway. As they went, both firefighters gave the bucket man a thumbs up for the water curtain along their route.

"HT 51 to Engine 51."

##Engine 51.##

"We're in the clear and heading out."

##10-4. Your two victims have medical orders from Rampart already set.##

"10-4. I'll be right there!" shouted Gage over the noisy water raining down onto them from above. "Moreno's completely uninjured."

##I copy that.## came Cap's highly relieved voice.

Soon, Gage and Moreno made the safety of the main street and separated, patting each other on the back with the parting. Moreno jogged over to the engine for a new air bottle and to give a fast report to Cap about the status of the interior fire degradation.

Johnny peeled off his dripping coat, air bottle and helmet.  
He tossed his HT to Cap as he ran by, heading towards Roy and Marissa. She was now lying on her back, on a rich O2 flow, with both her feet perched up on top of a fire hydrant. He quickly got to work assessing her consciousness status. "She shocky a whole lot?"

DeSoto shook his head from the I.V. he was starting on the shelter worker. "Nah. Pressure's still in the nineties.  
She's beginning to cough and she never needed the demand valve."

"How's her chest sounding."

"Wheezy, but open."

"Ok..." sighed Johnny. "Guess we're in business."  
He quickly got to work on raising her consciousness level.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marco was cooling down Chet's burn sheet covered hands with a bottle of saline where Kelly sat on the engine's bumper. "Oo, Chet. Do they hurt yet?"

"I definitely feel like a french fry, Marco. **Ummhff!* but I can wait. Help Roy and Johnny out with Marissa first.  
I'm fine. I'm only worried about what Cap's gonna think when I tell him I lost my helmet again."

"He's not gonna say anything, Chet, you were rescuing someone. Besides, you've just waded through an edge roofed wall collapse. Your helmet probably got knocked off by a brick or two hitting your head."

"Yeah, you're probably right. I do remember a few louder than normal noises from the usual. Oww.."  
grimaced Chet and he coughed wetly.

"How's your breathing? Do you need some O2?" Lopez asked.

"Nah. I'm phlegmy, but ok. Probably gonna be hoarse for an entire week. Tell Roy that I'm lung clear once you're through wetting my hands down, cause I am." Chet insisted, leaning his sweaty sooty haired head against the chrome grip bar. He closed his eyes in exhaustion and just concentrated on thinking cool thoughts to ease the throbbing fire shooting through his hands.

"Ok,..but I'm leaving the oxygen tank here in case things change. Cap'll have my hide if it's not offered." Lopez said.

"Man," said Chet, grinning. "You in working mode already? Get outta here and go be a civilian again. No doubt the cops are gonna need a statement from ya about what went on in there so you'd better act the part, pal, before Cap notices ya fussing with me."

"See ya later."

"Yeah..." grunted Chet as his irrigated, blistered hands were slowly chilled to blissful numbness in the foggy night air.

-  
Gage began a fast sweep, looking for burns and wounds on Marissa after cutting away her seared clothes. He found none. A log roll to expose her back, revealed nothing except dirt also. Johnny set down a burn pad underneath Marissa to insulate her from the cold pavement then he covered her lightly with a plastic sheet to help preserve her body temperature when the fainted girl began to shiver from the cold.

Johnny picked up the resuscitator and began using it in time with Marissa's inhalations to stimulate her awake once Roy had a flowing I.V. going.

The sensation of being ventilated woke the groggy girl up the rest of the way and she began coughing violently. Her panicked thoughts continued where they had left off from when the smoke had snuffed out her consciousness. "Meghan?! Stevie?! Ohmyg*d! Get em out!"

"Easy...easy.. Marissa? Marissa!.. They're both fine. Understand me?" Roy said, holding her shoulders down. "Meghan and Stevie are already on the way to the hospital,ok? Just try to relax."

"*choke* What happened?" Marissa blinked when she realized that she was on the street with a dozen bystanders gawking at her amid the flurry of red fire department lights.

"You ran back inside and got overcome by a little smoke."  
grinned Johnny, taking her blood pressure from where he crouched over Marissa's head. Roy palpated the result from where he was on the biophone, reaching across Marissa's waist and relaying it to Brackett on the phone.  
"Now I'm not gonna lecture you on how stupid a stunt that was. I think you've learned your lesson." said Johnny. "How's your chest feeling now?"

"Like I was chain smoking rubber bands.." she rasped.

"That'll go away in a bit. Just keep taking in deep breaths on this oxygen and it'll happen faster." he said switching out the demand valve for the clear mask again.

"How's Stevie? Meghan said he was choking!" Marissa panicked.

"We got it out. He's fine. He's fine. Now don't get worked up fussing about that. Meghan and Stevie are gonna be just fine.  
No one is hurt bad, including you. We're gonna be taking you to Rampart for a checkup in just a few minutes to be sure you're all right, ok?"

Marissa's lip quivered. "Oh, Father Murphy's gonna be so sad.  
We just found that office space for our soup kitchen. Tonight was our grand opening.." she said, bright tears in her eyes.  
"It'll be a miracle if the church raises all those funds a second time. We're not rich at all."

"Insurance companies can work miracles themselves nowdays,  
Marissa." Roy reassured her. "Try and get some rest. Johnny and I promise. We'll stay and watch you the whole trip in so you won't be alone. In fact, I'll ask Marco to join us, too, to keep you company."

"I'd like that." coughed Marissa, "We have so much to talk about ....rebuilding....everyt-...." and her eyes drifted shut.

"Marissa?" Gage asked in a gentle check.

"Just napping..." Marissa sighed. "I'm feeling....so tired...Let me sleep."

Roy checked the rate and visual on the EKG monitor. Then he said, "Sure. Sleep will only do you a world of good." DeSoto said. "Night,  
Marissa."

"...n-night, ...*yawn*...fellas."

-  
Photos: None.

*  
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:23:58 -0800 (PST) From: "Jeff Seltun" Subject: Pavlov's Dogs It was Thursday, one week after the soup kitchen fire.

Captain Stanley stood by the station's main chalkboard. He was the image of no nonsense authority as he outlined station's business briskly with some speed before an incoming run interrupted. "Ok, is everybody perfectly clear on their duty assignments? Marco, welcome back. You're on the engine, light duty. I want no direct attack fire fighting from you. If there's a call for a victim search, pass it off to someone else. At no time do you go into a fire scene."

"Aw, Cap. I feel fine. The doc says I'm almost one hundred percent." Lopez protested.

Hank's coffee brown eyes and bushy eyebrows rose in consternation. "Almost's a word, in my book, that means ain't gonna happen, Marco. Not in a million years. There's a reason for the pickiness of the clean bill of health order from McConike. Gee, fellas," he remarked sarcastically, "I guess the Order Nine's just window dressing. Marco, you know as well as I do that the chief kicked out that to prevent the sidelined from doing anything dumb before they're healed enough to handle it. Just look at Chet, pal. He's not grumbling being my look out and chart man."

"Oh yes he is..." mumbled Johnny Gage, from where he slumped on the couch, laughing.

Hank, still deep in his fire suppressing strategy lecture, missed the low banter going on behind him.

Kelly elbowed Johnny in the ribs to shut him up. "Says who."  
he hissed in annoyance. "I've been a perfect angel in spite of these." he said, holding up his water proofed bandage wrapped hands. "My burns are already crusting over."

"So's your mood, Chet. Shhh. I can't hear the Cap.." mumbled Murphy, Chet's stand in replacement on the engine.

"Arf! " barked Boot in a tattle tailing woof.

Cap swept down his map pointer in an exasperated huff.  
"All right. Who's flapping their gums?" he moaned in long suffering. "I told Boot to keep an eye out for chattering, so consider yourselves caught red handed."

Gage and Murphy and Kelly looked everywhere but at Cap's directed gaze.

Roy raised amused eyebrows. "I don't think Boot can point out the perpetrators, Cap. He doesn't have any fingers."

"Yeah, well if I hear another bark from him, None of you are gonna have any fingers left, cause you'll be scrubbing the vehicle slab by hand with toothbrushes! Kapeesh!"

No one even breathed.

"Now let's finish the usual monthly yada." he said, smacking the chalkboard with his stick, "and let's get done with it. I'm getting just as hungry as the rest of you. Whatever Dixie's cooking smells absolutely divine..." moaned Cap.

"Don't rush on my account.." came the smoky voiced reply from the nurse bustling around the station kitchen. "This is Roy's Beef Borgeaunon recipe. It only gets better the longer it simmers."  
and she licked the gravy off of her finger tips.

Hank swallowed in sheer torture, and his stomach growled. Loudly.  
"Yes...well..ok, now...where was I?"

Chet burst out eagerly. "Engine assignments just wrapped up and you were showing all of us how you contain an east facing interior warehouse magnesium fire under Santa Ana wind condtions exceeding fifteen knots,.. hypothetically supposing that the source material's ignition point was actually a multiple story high stack of wooden crates containing self heating military rations, Cap."

Hank's eyes waggled in sheer amazement. "..wow.. I'm glad somebody was paying attention here. Cause there's a test on it after lunch."

"What?!" exclaimed Marco, Murphy and Gage.

"Gotcha.." said Hank. "There's more than one way to flush out cover hiding birds. And I don't have to be Boot to do it. You three,  
consider yourselves on garage floor detail the rest of the week for talking at a meeting."

"Aw, Cap.."

"Wanna make it two weeks?"

Silence reigned.

Cap eyed the three firefighters shifting uncomfortably on the cushy leather couch and smiled, real big. "Thought so. Guys,  
I'm almost done. So bear with me, huh? Then we can dive into that wonderful New Year's eve meal that Dixie, bless her heart,  
so kindly made for us. Gimme thirty seconds more.."

All eyes finally rested on his own. Including Boot's.  
Cap nodded with a sigh and held up his last update report.  
"Marco, this one might be of interest to you. This is the coroner's report from that car accident where you got injured. Turns out that the driver's friend wasn't a friend of his after all. The passenger was a murder victim. Killed the night before. The driver was going to dump him in the river course anyway when he hit that telephone pole getting there to get rid of him."

"Those two were drug handlers?" asked Gage.

"Yep. The cops found some cocaine in the trunk, remember?"

"Yeah..." said Johnny aghast, his memories of saving the man pinned under the car slowing turning into something ugly. "I remember. I remember.. it's just that.. He seemed like such a nice guy. He didn't strike me as the murdering type."

"Tell that to the passenger we went hunting for in the river bed."  
said Mike Stoker. "I'm sure if he were still alive, he'd tell you the same thing." Mike sighed, crossing his arms over his elbows.

The stunned look didn't lessen on Johnny's face as he absorbed the news, until Boot's suddenly offered comforting tongue washed it away.

"That about wraps it up. Let's eat.." said Cap.

The gang rose from their chairs and the couch when a run of short tones went out for the squad.

"Oh, man..." said Johnny, eyeing up the steaming bowl of delectable meat stew that Dixie was centering on the table.  
"I'm gonna starve to death..."

"No you won't. Just think..it only g--" started Dixie.

"I know, I know. Only gets better the longer it simmers.."  
said Johnny as he followed Roy out of the room at a fast jog for the squad. He tried not to drool on his shirt as he ran by the others settling in at the table.

Dixie called out after them. "Oh, boys.. avoid the locker room when you get back if you know what's good for ya.." she warned with a wink. She wasn't beneath priming her favorite paramedic pair for a surprise or two.

"Huh?" gaped Johnny, skidding to a halt at the remark.

Roy's long arm jerked him into motion again. "Come on, Einstein.  
You can analyze that one on the way. Let's go.."

Soon, the speeding rescue squad was roaring code three onto the sunny, holiday traffic sparse boulevard from the drive.

##Squad 51. Man down. 1414 North Pacific Boulevard...##

"Left, Roy, left." pointed Johnny.

"I know. I know. Kinda figured it wasn't gonna be anything in the business district today. Everybody's all at home because of New Year's eve, remember? That's why Dixie took sympathy and came out here to cook lunch for us on her day off."  
complained Roy.

##1414 North Pacific Boulevard. Cross street Cocoa Beach.  
Time out: 1355.##

"I realize all that. I was just trying to help ya navigate Roy, geesh.." snapped Johnny.

"Yeah, well you should know I'm never too terribly accommodating on an empty stomach."

Johnny cracked a grin. "You and me both. Say, here's an idea.  
There's no cops out today to catch us speeding in a school zone. Step on it."

"Too right." Roy thumbed the acknowledgement microphone from the dashboard derisively."Squad 51. 10-4. KMG 365."

##Squad 51.##

-  
Photo: Dixie at the station, close, smiling.

Photo: Boot, barking.

Photo: Cap giving a lecture to the gang.

Photo: Johnny laughing on the couch.

Photo: Roy on the squad mic.

Photo: A grumpy Gage and DeSoto driving to a rescue.

*  
From: "Cassidy Meyers" Date: Wed Feb 2, 2005 9:10 pm Subject: How the Mighty Fall...

Johnny and Roy rushed down the sidewalk leading to a rustic suburban house loaded with their complete array of medical equipment. And then some.

"Roy, did L.A. give us any more information about what we got?" puffed Gage, hurrying to the front door of the house a little faster.

"Nope. You know as much as I do." Roy said tightly.

"Man,...*whew* Getting a call about a man down can mean just about anything.." Johnny sighed in frustration as their shoes clicked quickly on the cobblestones.

"Tell me about it..." grumbled Roy. So did his stomach.

Johnny laughed as they climbed the stone steps of the residence. "Was that you?"

"Fraid so. I'm so hungry, just the idea of these sugar I.V.'s being in my hand are setting me off."

Johnny split a gut. "Really? Just don't embarrass yourself in front of whoever..." Gage quipped. "The fire department has a professional image to uphold you know."

Roy didn't deign to reply to that comment. He set down the defibrillator, resuscitator and trauma box and briskly knocked on the front door loudly. "L.A. County Fire Department!"

There was no immediate reply.

Automatically, the two paramedics split up to peer into the nearby curtained windows to see if they could see anything.

A monstrous barking greeted Roy's sharp knuckle raps on a stained glass window pane.

A woman's frantic voice soon wove itself over the large dog's.  
"I'm coming. Hurry. Please. It's my husband. He won't wake up!"

"Open the door, ma'am. It's still locked." Gage shouted.

"Oh,,...." the housewife trickled. "I- I'm sorry.. I.. There! It's open!" And the door flung wide open on a living room of olive green shag carpeting and beadstring doorways.

The huge slathering maw of a gigantic canine launched in a leap past the two paramedics heads when the way to the outside porch was clear.

Gage and Roy flinched as they each got an impression of a great St. Bernard in full motion. But then the dog was gone in a flurry of scrabbling claws.

"Faust! You come back here! Oh, bad dog! BAD dog! Not the mail man!" the petite flower aproned, red haired woman quailed.

Johnny and Roy gulped down the scare in seconds, barely registering the sight of a mailman across the street rapidly making for a sturdy tree to scale, trailing flying envelopes and bills. Faust cleared the yard's white picket fence easily, in pursuit of his daily quarry.

"Oh no!!.. Not again. Uh, I'll worry about Faust later. Please.. Hurry.." begged the very young housewife and she disappeared in a frantic run for a den workshop located just to the right of the front door.

"I just about had a heart attack seeing him. Didn't you?" Gage whispered to his equally rattled up partner.

"Can't say that we weren't tipped off. Keep breathin'. You'll survive. We'll rescue the mailman after we're done here. Either that, or we can call in the engine to get him down." Roy shrugged, not even giving the dramatic fiasco of dog versus mail carrier a second glance.

"Oh, nooo.. I can do without a hungry Cap breathing down my neck."  
Gage said. "Whatever you do, don't call for the engine."

"Ok." Roy agreed.

------------------------------------------------------------------

They found a young man lying face down, slumped under a running buzzsaw on a bench. Not knowing if the man's problem was electrical shock or not, Johnny used an uncut pine board to knock the tool's plug out of the wall. "What happened?" he asked the housewife.

"I don't know! Jerry gave a yell and I ran in here and found him like this. He- he- he wouldn't wake up, no matter how hard I shook him. Oh! Is he ok?! I thought he fell down stone dead." she sniveled, still very hysterical. "He's so pale."

Roy and Johnny moved the woodworking bench away from their patient and they both bent close over him, feeling for signs of life.

"He's got a pulse." DeSoto said.

"He's breathing.." added Johnny without moving him and he went straight into a head, neck and spine check, running his hands over the husband's body and along his limbs, looking for trouble spots. "Doesn't seem like he fell. I'm not finding any blood anywhere and nothing's out of alignment here."

Roy nodded, setting up the biophone after getting the man on some oxygen.

"Hey!" Gage yelled in the man's ear. "Jerry, can you hear me?!"

Jerry didn't move.

Reaching down, Johnny tried something else.

The man finally moaned weakly with a firm sternal rub.

"Hey, Jerry.. Open your eyes. Come on. Can you do that for me?!"  
Johnny shouted.

He didn't open them. Nor did he moan again to anything that was just verbal.

Carefully, Johnny turned the passed out husband onto his side and opened his shirt up, checking for problems down the front part of Jerry's body. "Ma'am. Does Jerry have any medical problems that you know of? Diabetes, old injuries, any breathing problems?"

"No, nothing like that..." she sobbed. "Jerry's a very healthy man. In fact, last night, he was telling me how pleased the airforce doctors were with his physical. He's just been approved to be a test fighter pilot.  
Oh, my G*d. What's wrong with him?"

"Ma'am. We're gonna get some answers real soon. My partner's getting a doctor on the line right now. Just calm down a little. I think you'll do a little better sitting down on that chair over there, don't you?"  
Johnny suggested. "No need to get worked up. He's doing fine so far."

The tearful housewife listened and immediately took a seat when her rubbery knees finally failed on her. "Please help him. I didn't know what to do except get on the phone to the operator."

"You did fine doing that. We're here now. Missus...." Johnny fished.

"Mrs. Kaftan., uh, J-Joyce. I'm Joyce."

"All right, Joyce. I'm gonna take a set of vitals on Jerry here for our doctor on the phone and we'll all get at least some clues about what's causing this blackout of his." Gage told her.

"O-Ok.." she sniffed.

"Rampart, this is Squad 51. How do you read?" said Roy calmly into the receiver. Outside the window, Faust was still woofing angrily. Roy hoped the carrier outside had reached a safe height in the tree in time.

Joyce was torn between watching the two paramedics assess her husband and yelling reassurances to Clarence the mail carrier who was glaring death's daggers at her from the eucalyptus tree in the neighbor's yard. "Just hang on, Mr. McFeely. Jerry's sick. It'll only be a minute and I'll get out there! I'm so sorry Clarence. Please don't be mad at me...Faust. Get down!" And she horse whistled piercingly. "Bad boy! You're a very badddd boyyyy!"

The dog went right on ignoring her, raining showers of foamy slobber all over the ground beneath Clarence's refuge as he leaped and jumped, trying to clamp a full set of teeth on a pants leg cuff or any other body part dangling from the flimsy tree.

DeSoto cupped the receiver to cut down the noise surrounding him. "Rampart this is Squad 51, how do you read?"

Finally, Morton's mellow reply answered him. ##Go ahead, 51.##

Roy filled in the resident with what he already knew.

Johnny meanwhile, discovered some more medical history on Jerry from Joyce. "Are you sure about that last part?"

"Yeah. The airforce doc said that he only had an acute subungual hematoma from getting pinched last week in a hanger door."

"Roy, did you get that?" Johnny asked.

"Yeah.. I think so... doc did you hear that last bit? An acute subungual hematoma from one week ago? Whatever that is,  
we're not finding any signs of cranial or body bruising on him anywhere. His pressure's 88 over 62." DeSoto reported.  
"But his pulse and respirations are normal."

There came a long sigh from the biophone receiver.  
##51. Check the patient's hands. A subungual hematoma is a blood bound fingernail. Your man's blackout could be syncope if he smashed it again with ..say a hammer. You did mention that he was working with chemical-less tools. His vital signs and lack of obvious injury fit that pattern. Wake him up with smelling salts and advise him to visit his family doctor to trephine the nail to release some of that pressure for pain relief." Morton said firmly with a trace of irritation.

Blushing with embarrassment, Johnny located the offending implement lying just to the right of the man's waist. He held it up to Roy. "Oops."

DeSoto soon located the dark maroon colored swollen nail on Jerry's left hand. "So that's what subungual means." he smirked covering the phone. "10-4, Rampart. Advise a trip to the family doctor."  
and he disconnected the line as fast as he could before they both received a lecture about brushing up on medical terminology.

With an amused florish, Roy broke out an ammonia capsule and very soon, Jerry was among the world of the living once again. "I think you can manage from here, Johnny. I'll go check on Clarence to make sure he didn't have a coronary or something waiting for us to bail him out."

Johnny didn't know what was funnier, the sight of a very beefy air force pilot cradling his pinky finger in his lap, moaning,  
or the sight of Roy attempting to cage the cagey Faust against the picket fence long enough to snatch a grip onto the massive dog's leather collar so the silver haired mailman could climb safely on down to the street.

----------------------------------------------------------

Photos: None.

******************************************************* From : patti keiper Sent : Thursday, February 3, 2005 3:01 AM Subject : The Nursing Elf..

Johnny and Roy couldn't get back to the station fast enough. They decided not to spoil their healthy appetites with gas station candy bars, opting instead to gorge on Dixie's wonderfully exquisite station cooked meal.

Soon, all the gang were either slumped in chairs or snoring on beds in the bunk room, trying to digest the food they had practically inhaled like air.

"Geez, you would think firefighters would know how to feed themselves. What am I? Manna from heaven?" she said of the guys settling in around her with magazines and sections from the daily newspaper.

"You sure are..." grinned Cap. "We all harbor a passionate hate for leftovers so we couldn't let your good food go to waste."

"But you fellas ate four whole gallons of Beef Bourgenon!"

"A little padding never hurt any firefighter. I promise you that we'll burn off the extra weight easily in a couple of days. All it takes is one three alarm fire to trim a body down in mere hours. Have no fear for our cardiovascular health. We've been down that road before.." Cap said, glaring at Chet meaningfully.

"Geez, Cap. When are you gonna let that dates and vitamins diet craziness I once tried working for Morton, die?" Kelly complained out loud.

"When I'm old and gray." replied Hank. Gage opened his lips in a rejoiner for the left wide open comment from his captain, but Hank beat him to it. "Never mind. You never heard me say the when part of that last bit. Gage, you just hush."

Johnny grinned and said, "I wasn't gonna say anything about anything. Besides, all of us already know how you're getting along in years so any further commentary on that's a moot point."

Cap cleared his throat dangerously.

Roy saved the day."Say, uh, Cap. Did the paperwork go through on that latest requisition sent in by Marco and I?"

"What paperwork?"

"The holiday dinner charity form. The one Marco needed approval on in order to help out his ch--" DeSoto replied.

"Oh that form... already done. The event's tomorrow night and I'm now ordering all of you to attend. You know where it is. Be there at six o'clock sharp. Bring a party hat and kazoo for the stroke of midnight everyone. It's gonna be a great time for everybody."

"Am I not invited?" Dixie mused, looking pouty. "I think I've done my fair share for the department."

"Ok,.. you can come." said Chet Kelly teasingly. "Under one stipulation.  
That you let all of us do the cooking."

"I hope you fellas remember to bring the stomach pump if that's the case." McCall teased. "Which way to the head guys? I've forgotten."

Stoker, Lopez, Gage and DeSoto rose to point out the way, each of them giving her directions at the same time. "The other side of the vehicle bay, straight ahead, and then turn left first door. Go through the shower room to the stalls." they said at the same time in a jumble.

"The one on the end's specially made for women.." Johnny said awkwardly, still pointing over his shoulder. He won only disapproving frowns from the gang for the odd comment.

Dixie rubbed her nose in apparent confusion.  
"I don't think I quite got it fellas. You were all talking over each other too much. Would someone ..be so kind as to show me the way there?"

The guys fell over each other to be the one to guide her. Soon,  
everyone accompanied Dixie to the locker room entry door.

Gage was the first one over the threshold and quickly, Dixie darted forward, grabbed his head in between her elegant hands, and kissed him full on the mouth.

She quickly did the same thing for the second-in Roy DeSoto before he caught onto her amourous intentions.

Johnny pulled away from McCall's long nailed grip in a scramble. "Whatja do that for?! Ya kissed me!"

Roy just chuckled good naturedly, rubbing the lipstick off his lips.  
"Oh, my.... Johnny? I think we've been thoroughly had."

"Sure you were." shrugged Dixie. "And you had no choice in the matter, Johnny."

"Oh, really..." Gage chided. "Why is that?" he said in dismay at being lip covered in ladies' makeup.

Hank cracked up and so did the rest of the guys who strangely,  
hadn't stepped over the portal leading to the bathroom's hallway.  
"Gage...."

"What?!" the Native American Indian snapped.

"Use your legendary paramedic's skills of observation and look up."  
Cap commanded, still laughing.

Johnny and Roy both glanced up and only then did the two of them see the huge clustered sprig of fresh mistletoe that Dixie had tied there while they had been gone on their rescue call.

"I did warn you two." Dixie soothed, rubbing off the lipstick stick on Johnny's chin.

He waved her away, fully in the wounded male's self consciousness mind bent. "Cut that out, Dix. I can wash my own face." Johnny fluttered."Now are ya gonna get by me for the toilets or not?"

"Don't have to. I went earlier. Ciao..." and she left the station through the yard's rear exit, followed merrily by a scampering well-fed-on-beef-bourgenon stuffed Boot. "See ya at the party at Headquarters tomorrow night. And captain, I promise to leave the rest of my mistletoe at home." she grinned cattily. "Thanks for letting me pull one over on Roy and Johnny. It was fun."

"Any time the mood strikes you." Cap said cheerfully. "I'm sure my men enjoyed every minute of it."

"Says who?" giggled Roy. "I'm a happily married man."  
And at the same time,.."Says who?" moaned Johnny. "I'm a tragically single bachelor."

"My work ....is done. Happy New Year's fellas." Dixie purred.  
Then the still Christmas infected imp from Rampart, was gone.

Who's to say who smiled longer, Cap for getting a joke in enough to score on his paramedics using Dixie, or Chet, for not being the butt of the preverbial joke this time around.

Gage wiped that smile off Kelly's face with a single comment as he passed by Chet to go wash his face. Johnny winked at Roy to pay attention to what he was about to say next so that he could feast fully on the outcome, too.

"Man is she a great kisser. I still got goose pimples!"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: A sprig of fresh mistletoe.

Photo: Johnny getting smooched by Dixie.

Photo: Roy getting smooched in a closeup.

Photo: Cap standing by a still shell shocked Gage and DeSoto in the vehicle bay.

Photo: Chet and Roy standing in a station doorway.

From: Jeff Seltun Date: Thu Feb 3, 2005 5:42 pm Subject: The Bond Beyond Kinship...

Marco Lopez separated himself from the others engaged in lively conversation at the Year's End party at L.A. Headquarters.  
It had been many days since his near death experience, but it hadn't, as yet, left him free of introspection for a single solitary moment. And his lined, tired face, reflected it.

Casting a glance around the room, Lopez found an open space where he could sit down by himself, away from the noise and oddly jarring gaiety.

He found solice in a pocket of quiet inside a room full of unused chairs behind the dispatching station. Gently, Sam Lanier, the dispatcher, still on duty, turned down his scanner radio to deepen the quiet that Marco was seeking.

And there, in the brightly lighted store room, he found another small person seeking the same kind of balm.

Lopez saw his own complex expression perfectly mirrored on a hispanic boy's face and instantly recognized it for what it was. His tiny features, too, were blanketed with a pale sadness.

"Stevie? Are you ok?"

Without looking up, the nine year old sighed. "Yeah, Mr. Lopez. I'm fine.  
I guess I'm just tired, that's all. Tonight I think I need some time to just go over the things painted in my head instead of celebrating, you know?"

"Kind of what I was picturing for myself, too. May I join you?" Marco asked, indicating the plastic chair next to the despondent boy.

"Sure. Have a seat..." Stevie gestured absently.

Several minutes passed and the two of them just stared at the walls,  
perking up only when the familiar buzzing notes of a rescue call came out from Sam's board for a nearby fire station.

Then Marco felt a tiny hand slip into his own. "Wanna talk about it?" asked a treble whisper into his ear.

Marco nodded in quiet acceptance, laying his other hand over the tinier one. "Yep. No one else understands at all what I'm going through. I figured that you would, seeing that we both have gone through nearly the same thing."

"You mean the bit where we almost died last week?"

"Yeah." Marco said, moving an arm over the boy's shoulder to draw him nearer into a warm embrace to end his shivering.

Stevie did the same, and for more than just mutual comfort's sake. He was reaching out, to the only one capable of understanding the unique angst that was still dominating his very soul.

"I sure wish I got a note from the other side. Clear as pictures, senor.."  
muttered Stevie, his own deep brown eyes connecting slowly with Marco's. "Father Murphy says he can't tell me what what I saw means,  
since he wasn't there. Now isn't that the craziest thing you ever heard? A man of the cloth being totally clueless about the afterlife."  
the boy scoffed.

"He hasn't seen the other side like we have." Marco said gently,  
lacing his fingers into the boy's. He offered him a Coke from a chilling cooler nearby but the child shook his head no.  
Marco sighed, not feeling very thirsty either. At least, not in a physical sense. "Stevie, what did you see out there?"

The boy's eyes filled with an emotion that Marco couldn't identify,  
yet Lopez seemed to feel the child, inside of his heart, in an inexplicable way that usually wasn't possible with complete strangers who hardly knew each other.

"You first..." said the vaguely troubled boy.

"Well, " sighed Lopez. "I saw ...my dead father...and...I was absolutely overwhelmed by something that I can only describe as a pervasive,  
all encompassing sense of peace. It was as if Bernardo and I ..suddenly had the same mind and body...for an instant. "

"I could feel what he felt...and hear what he was saying. I was seeing,  
what he saw around him, effortlessly, and thinking what he thought.  
And- and and it was a two way street. He could experience my life's events as acutely as I had lived them. And I saw how he had lived his.  
But soon, it was if he began weighing my life's worth, and deciding whether or not I should go on into the light with him."

"Then I was pulled away from Bernardo's arms while in between a heartbeat. I think it was then my friend Roy gave me an electrical shock to get my heart beating well enough so that it could sustain me again. "

"The first thing I heard was Captain Stanley saying that I was finally breathing ok for them. Then I knew nothing for a while until I woke up in the ambulance."

Throughout his tale, Marco saw Stevie's eyes get bigger and bigger as parallels eerily lined up with his own sharp memories. The boy's eyes watered in grief and sadness. "I should still be out there, Marco!" he sobbed. "My being down here with everybody still alive is so painful to me... I don't think I can stand it.."

Marco drew the boy deeper into his arms and kissed his hair. "Shh, querido.  
It's ok. I think that this pain's just us, getting used to our bodies again. It'll go away. It has to, like everything else bad always does:  
I think it'll be a little like falling until we've figured out how to walk again."

Silence stretched between them, but there was no distance at all.

Marco broke the stillness. What happened to you when you found yourself...'outside'?"

The child's face flushed red with distress and he shifted violently on the chair."People don't know how much those who've gone on are still a part of them!" Stevie cried. "My abuela was over there and she said to me that it wasn't my time to go yet. She said that I had to stay with mom and my brother, until I've done something I'm supposed to do. Only she couldn't tell me what that was... I felt like I knew, Marco, absolutely everything."  
his face twisted. "But now I've forgotten it all and that's now the pain I got in here..." and Stevie pointed to his head, "and here.." and his shaking fingers rested on his chest. "And if I don't figure it out, I know it's gonna kill me again...." he choked.

"It's ok, querido. I think the pain's supposed to happen, so you can learn from it."

"How?!"

"Just talk to me. And tell me what you know...." Marco whispered.

Stevie slowly relaxed and his eyes seemed like they lost their focus.

"Grandma was an angel, and she was so bright!" shared Stevie. "I didn't want to leave her."

"I didn't want to leave my father either. But now, I see that I'm not ready to go where he is now. Don't you feel that too?"

"Yeah.. a little. I can feel that it's in your mind and it's making that awful pain leave you. Bit by bit." sighed Stevie, wiping his tears away with a hand. He snuffled in the way of the very young and that endeared him to Marco instantly.

"That's right. And I think I know the reason why. When I think of my father, I can see what's truly important now.  
Family, love, creativity, was the impression I got." he smiled. "It's really hard to have a bad day now since then.  
Frankly, I simply can't have one because I realized that I had awakened, still breathing. All because of what my father said to me in those last moments."

"He said, 'Marco, go live your life as I have lived mine. I will still be here, watching over you and your mother, every step of the way until we are meant to be together once more. There's nothing to fear from death. It is simply a change in you where your body recedes and your mind grows up. Don't worry about any of it. Everybody who loves you will support your needs fully when the time comes around for good.' "

"Stevie, your grandmother probably told you the same thing, but you've had a longer way to travel to get back to your mother.  
Abuela's message will come when your body's settled again.  
I know it will."

The small Hispanic boy sighed and stopped crying, still nestled in Marco's warm arms. "You know what? I m not afraid to die now."

Lopez threw on a wry look for his benefit. "I sure don t want to quite yet, even though it was a very wonderful thing."

"I think everyone should do it." Stevie voiced with finality. "Well, ...at least, ...someday."

"Don't be afraid to talk about all of this with your mother like we are doing now. No one will ever look at you strangely for doing this. Tell her especially the part about your grandmother being an angel."

"I will Mr. Lopez. I'll try real hard."

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In the weeks that followed in church, Marco Lopez often heard Stevie tell his friends about the time when he was dead. Hearing the child's tale, each time, helped him connect with his own story and it got stronger and stronger, easier and easier with each telling to the support counselors or to his fellow firemen at the station.

At first, Marco was fearful that the folks around them wouldn't understand their stories and become withdrawn after the listening. But that didn't happen.

Rather, they got a profound, softened look on their faces that always came with a smile.

FIN Season Two, Episode Seventeen..

That Latin Flair

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***NOTE: All author writings submitted to the theater will be set free onto the web to reach as many readers as we can manage to find. Contributing to any ETL episode means that has permission to publish your work in the manner presented here on this website and on text versions of the stories on other sites. All web audience writers or volunteer consultants and their corresponding emails will be duly recorded and left in place within each show's music and imaged airing episode, pointing out that fan or professional EMS personnel's creative contribution. Theater Host- Emergency Theater Live! .. 


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